Episode #21 To Bark or Not to Bark

Dogs bark as a way of communicating and expressing themselves. Why is it we are always trying to stop it and is that ok? Amy talks about several different types of barking, how each sounds and what if anything we can do about it.

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This is the puppy training podcast episode number 21. To bark or not to bark, this podcast is for those looking to train their own dog, whether as a family companion service or a therapy dog. And I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the puppy training podcasts, and I'm your host. Amy Jensen. Hello, everyone. How was your week? I spent my Labor Day weekend backpacking into White Pine Lake, which is in in the Cash National Forest with my husband, three kids and one of our really good neighbor families. It was so beautiful. It's a really good time, and I hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend. So backpacking is something that was on my bucket list. I really wanted to get my kids out and do it together as a family, and we were able to do it this weekend. So what's on your bucket list? What are you going to do about it? Hopefully something. It's always fun to check those things off of our list. It was a good weekend. Now I'm back at it. I'm here today to talk to you about barking. That is something that it's It's kind of tricky topic. You know, barking can be a good thing, but also barking can be a little bit annoying, so we're gonna talk about that today. But first I wanna give a shout out to To Sonny. She's an eight week old golden doodle puppy, and her awesome owner, Kellan, is doing a great job training her. She sent me videos this week of Little Sonny going into her kennel on cue and then waiting to come out until she's been released. It was so fun to watch. So remember, you guys can start your puppies on training right away. Eight weeks is not too soon to start training. I t to my service dog puppies. You know, several new commands a week, and I'm getting them to learn as many things as I can in the first several weeks because they're like little sponges, they soak things up. They're eager to learn they're so interested in you, and they want to be where you are and do what you're doing. So it's a great time to start training. So way to go Callin and Sonny, keep up the good work. Thanks for sharing that video and with that. If you guys have videos of you training your puppy, I would love to see them. Send them to info at Baxter Bella dot com. And also, if you have any questions, feel free to send them my way and love to help you out. Maybe I'll answer your question on the podcast. So a question that came in recently was about working, and that is the topic of our day today. This is the question. My puppy barks and growls in a playful way. She gets super wound up on. I'm worried about this behavior. So today we're gonna look at barking and why our dog is barking. And then I want you to consider two options. Number one. What can I do about it? And number two. Should I do something about it? Because I don't think that we should always necessarily do something about the barking. So where you don't take a look at this question as to, you know, that my puppies barking and growling in a playful way, she gets super wound up when I'm worried about the behavior. I think there's a little bit, um, you know more to just this question than the barking. But we're gonna take this because I think it's an interesting question and we're gonna take a look at it from the barking point of view and answer, you know, should I do something about this? What can I do about this? Um, let's look at that a little deeper. The lots of animals make noises. Ducks, quack cows, moo horses, neigh cats, Miao and dogs bark. But for some reason, when dogs burke, we as people tend to get irritated or frustrated, or it stresses this out, we feel like we need to fix it or solve it or make it stop and go away. But if you think about it, if you have a cat that started to me, how do we suddenly go to our catfish? Quiet. We don't do we. Or if you hear a cow, moo, we just listen to it move or if you hear a sheet, say bad and we just listen to it so and not that we love those sounds or noises. But we just recognize that those are the sounds and noises that those animals make and similarly dogs. They growl and they bark and they communicate via these avenues, but sometimes the barking gets escalated. Or sometimes we feel like the barking doesn't need to happen. And I'm not sure why. We feel like, as you know, for dogs that we need to fix this for them or we need to stop this kind of behavior. But you don't hopefully this podcast, we'll get you to think about that a little different light and maybe start to think, you know, is my dog expressing himself? What is he trying to say? So we're going to dive into this today just a little bit, because I want to kind of, you know, change your thinking on this matter to the point that maybe it just makes you question, you know, doing need to stop my dog from barking it. Okay, that he's barking. Can I let him bark? Where do I need to stop him? And then, if so, how so again, dogs bark is a way of communicating. They're trying to tell us something so usually they see something or they hear something or they're just feeling something, and so they're communicating by barking. And if you listen to your dog, you'll be able to start to pick out the different barks that he gives you, and you'll be able to tell the meanings of those different barks. So when I have a dog, if they're barking, I asked myself several questions. So Number one, I think, Why is my dog barking? What is causing the barking? Why is he doing this in this moment? And I look at the scenario around him. What's going on around him? What are the possibilities of why he could be doing this? I also asked myself, What kind of burke is this? There's several different kinds. We're gonna talk about two of them today, but there's more than just those two. So we're gonna discuss those but realize that there's several different kinds of barking and you'll be able to tell what your dog is trying to tell you by listening to the type of work that he's giving you. And then I like to ask myself, you know, what can I do about it? Should I do something about it? Because not all of the time I feel like I should do something. I should let him bark on occasion. So I do ask myself, What can I do about it, Or should I even do something about it? When I get asked questions about barking often times the dog is either doing an alert or warning bark where they're doing what we call an excitement bark. So those are the two types of barking that I want to talk about briefly today, the 1st 1 that alert or the warning. Burke. This sounds like one short, sharp bark. So if your puppy maybe you're outside and your puppy sees somebody across the street or another dog where they hear a neighbor and they let out that one short, sharp burke that's usually on alert. He's trying to warn you that someone is there. Oftentimes the dog feels threatened by something or someone s. So that's what it sounds like. And that's what it is. And then what can you do about it? This type of bark? I like to show my dog that I can take responsibility for that threat. So if I recognize my dog is giving me a warning or an alert saying, Hey, somebody's here or someone's in my space or in my territory, or maybe you know they're making me uncomfortable Then when I recognize my dog is doing this. I use what we call as splitting technique. So I put myself between my dog and whatever he's feeling threatened by or whatever he's alerting me to. I stepped in between him and the sound or the visual of what he's seen, and I basically show him that I'm taking responsibility for them. Sometimes you can even teach your dog a signal. I like to just use the palm of my hand to show my puppy that it's okay, I've got it, and he doesn't need to worry about it anymore. And then when he sees my hand come up, I step in between him. I do that splitting behavior, and I hold my hand out for him to see. It's a very good visual to him that he can relax. It's okay. Thank you for letting me know that someone or something is here. I am aware of it and it's okay. We can move on. So again, that's that alert or warning bark. It's that one short, sharp bark when your dog is alerting you to someone or something that he either Caesar hears. So the next Burke that I get asked about a lot is an excitement, Burke. Now this one's kind of fun, and this is the one where I kind of bring up that question of Should I stop this kind of barking because, you know, dogs want to express themselves, and if we were really happy or we were really excited, what I ask you not to tell me or not to talk about it, we wouldn't. We want to hear about it. And so the excitement. Burke. It can be good, and it can be annoying. And so there are times where I would probably stop my dog from doing it. But there's also times I would probably let my dog do it. So this bark sounds happy. It's high pitched, and it's a Siri's of barks, so it's multiple barks in a row, usually higher pitched. But it sounds happy your dog might be doing things with his body. He might be bouncing around or wagging his tell or jumping, you know, showing with his body language that he's also happy and excited. So it's really hard to guys to punish happy. I don't know about you, but that's not fun for me. I'm not something that I want to do. So if my dog is happy and he's letting out some happy barks, I'm usually okay with it when my puppies plane with another puppy and they let out some barks or some happy sounds while they're playing. I'm totally fine with that. Some of you know, boots that I'm training to be an autism service dog. He's here at our house right now, and he barks to play all of the time. Hell, even bark let out a little happy bark if he's chasing his tennis ball or something like that, so and he's very happy doing it. It's definitely an excitement Burke. And while he's playing, if he lets out that little vocalization I can't punish that you can't punish joy. So I let him do that. Now there are other times when your puppy might be letting out on excitement bark that we don't necessarily love. This could be times when you come home. Maybe when guests come over, he sees other dogs. There are times when it can get escalated or out of hand. You know those examples that I just gave you like guests coming over. I don't love that my dogs run to the door and bark. You know, they might be excited again. That's an excitement, Burke, But maybe that's a behavior that I would want to curb. Now I do let my dogs and I like this behavior in them. I like them to bark when the doorbell rings or the doorbell. There's a knock at the door where somebody's here, because oftentimes in my home, I don't hear the doorbell or the knock, especially if I'm in my bathroom or somewhere like downstairs in my movie room, where it's pretty soundproof. So I don't actually don't mind that my dogs let out that bark did let me know that somebody's here. I do ask them, however, to stop when I asked them to stop. So if my dogs are excited and they're barking on Michael, someone's at the door, then I tell them that's enough. And then they stopped working, and that's what I appreciate. So I let them be excited and I let them be happy. And then I say, That's enough, Thank you. You know, you let me know that they're here. I appreciate that. But now it's time to be done barking because that excitement Burke can get long, it could get stretched out. It can get annoying. It's very high pitched, hurts our years, often times. So I hear you. If you're like, yeah, that's too much for me especially. You have multiple dogs in your household and one starts barking, and then the other start barking. Barking is like that. It's a social behavior, and so if one's barking, the others often times will join in. And so, yes, excitement barking is happy. I don't want to punish happy. I'm sure that you don't either, Um, but occasionally it does get to the point where it's escalated or it's too long, and then we can step in and weaken. Say, you know, that's enough, Thank you, and our puppy can stop working. So let's talk about that for a little bit. You come home, maybe your dog. It's super excited when you walk through the door here anticipating that you're going to be coming home from work or wherever, at a certain time of day. And he gets excited and he's barking. So there are things that we can do to help that same with the guests at the door what are some alternate behaviors that we could teach our puppy that we would appreciate more than the excitement barking. So one tip I'll give you today for the excitement barking is to teach calm. We want our puppies to learn that they get rewarded and that it's more beneficial for them in certain circumstances, to be calm than to let out their excitement barking. Let's take the guests at the door. So on a guest brings my doorbell or knocks on my door. I've trained my puppies to go to a place. It's either a dog bed. Bruno goes to his chair. You can have it be a crate or a kennel. You get to decide where you want your puppy to go, but the Q is the ring or the knock, and then are my puppies go to their places. They sit there calmly, and I feed them treats initially to get them to do this behavior, and then we slowly phase out the rewards that they're getting for staying there. Um, and then I always pay out. Once the guests leave and I release them from their positions, I always give them a really good payoff. We've talked about on previous podcasts. Expensive behaviors. And this would be what I would consider a very expensive behavior is for my dog toe. Wait calmly on place or on his mat or in a kennel quietly, while a guest comes to the house, because that puppy is excited and they do want to go say hello to whoever's here, or at least go sniff them or take them out and see what they're all about. And to calm that excitement down and to have your puppy contain himself and to control that imports to go and greet that guest is a really tough behavior for him than a tough choice he has to make. So for making that choice of remaining calm in the place that I've asked him to remain, I always pay out really well for that. That keeps that behavior nice and strong, and it motivates my dog to want to do in the future. So see this week if you can identify and alert or warning bark or possibly some excitement barking in your puppies. Some puppies air more vocal than other puppies, but if your dog does vocalize, see if you can identify what kind of vocalization it is, And remember, it will help. If you can ask yourself, why is my dog barking? What kind of bark is it? What can I do about it? Or should I do something about it? And once you can answer all of those questions, then we can make a training plan based on why your puppies Burkey. And if you feel like you do need to do something about it, we're not right. Thanks for listening today. I hope you learn something new. Can I have a goal of helping over 1000 puppies this year? And we are well, on our way. I think you guys for that. I thank you for your reviews. I thank you for sharing this podcast Happy training, and I will talk to you next week. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training questions, visit my sight. Baxter and Bella dot com to contact me