A canine trainer has shared some simple tips to help stop your pooch from barking at ‘absolutely nothing’ – and it all comes down to the golden rule of dog training
A dog trainer revealed some straightforward tips to curb your dog’s incessant barking, including a golden rule all owners should adhere to. Dogs are peculiar creatures, often barking at seemingly nothing. A shadow? A leaf? An out-of-place slipper?
They feel the need to bark loudly at it, asserting their dominance. While it’s crucial to recognise a dog’s barking as their way of signalling danger, it’s also a key part of communication, vital for their socialisation and growth. Owners should be able to calmly instruct their dogs to cease barking and have the command obeyed. However, this is easier said than done for some people and their pets.
Now, a dog trainer has offered some concise advice to help you put an end to your dog’s barking, along with the golden rule every owner should follow for a well-behaved pooch.
Jack from Dovecote Dogs took to TikTok to explain that he often sees people responding incorrectly to a yapping dog. He stated: “Do you have a dog that barks relentlessly at sometimes absolutely nothing? Well here’s three tips to help you guys out.”
He started by saying: “I can almost guarantee the way most people have tried to deal with this is the dog is over in the corner barking and you’ve gone ‘stop it, pack it in’ or ‘behave, come this way’.
“You’re essentially shouting commands over the top of the dog. Our body language is facing the same way as the dog, so in the dog’s mind, we are also barking at the same thing they are barking at. They don’t know what we’re saying. All they can see is our body language is in the same direction as them.”
Jack’s first tip is to “break their eye contact”.
He continued: “Step in front of them and be face on with them. This makes it very clear that we are communicating to your dog.”
Next, Jack recommends this golden rule of sticking with your choice of command.
He explained: “It could be ‘quiet,’ it could be ‘enough,’ whatever it is be consistent with it. Wait for a small gap in your dog’s barking, there will always be one, you may just have to wait for it. When you have that small gap, step in front and say your command.”
Jack added: “The reason we wait for a gap is because we want to pair the command with actually being quiet. If we start using it while they’re barking we end up pairing it with the barking.”
Finally, Jack suggests once you’ve positioned yourself in front of your dog and broken their eye contact, then waited for them to pause before issuing your command and they’ve stopped barking, you should always follow it with a reward.
Dog owner panics after finding ‘worm-like creatures’ floating in pet’s water bowl
Dog owners warned to take paw licking seriously this autumn
He concluded: “It will really reinforce this good behaviour. The way to do this is to offer them a reward in the opposite direction to what they were barking at. The reason is because it builds value in coming away from the thing they were barking at. It builds value in disengagement.”
Viewers were impressed with the advice and others shared their own stories of noisy dogs. One person wrote: “Mine barks at ANY animal on the TV weather a real one or an animated one and every advert has an animal in… she sits and watched TV waiting.”