A friend of mine told me that her neighbors called Animal Control because her dogs always bark when she is not home. When I asked her if she needed help with them, she said “no, they are just speaking their mind”, the neighbor just doesn’t understand that. My next door neighbor has three small dogs that bark incessantly. I recently spoke with him and he told me that he is so frustrated by it, that sometimes he yells at them angrily. I asked him why he doesn’t teach them not to bark, he said “dogs will be dogs”. These are just two examples of how barking dogs can disrupt our lives. Also, these are two examples of how people can misunderstand what it means when a dog barks. To be clear, a dog that barks continually or at everything and nothing, is a dog that is unbalanced. In a balanced pack, if the dog keeps barking he will be corrected (for starters the barking will give the pack’s “position” away, so that is not good if you are a predator). When a human ignores that, they are “breaking” a code of confidence. They are not acting like a pack “should”. When they yell at the dog to stop, they are basically barking with the dog, so they are following the barking dog’s lead and also not responding the way a pack would. So how to solve the barking conundrum? Do some dogs just need to bark to express themselves? Are we doomed to live around barking dogs for the rest of our lives?
The answer is no, dogs do not need to bark to express themselves, dogs that bark constantly are in a state of continual alertness and think they are not safe where they are. In a pack of dogs, the barkers are the alert system. Usually they are the most sensitive dogs, or back of the pack dogs. Since they are the most responsive they normally react quicker to changes in the environment. They then alert the pack. But that’s it, once alerted, the pack investigates or continues moving. The alert system is checked and stopped if it continues incessantly. In a pack of dogs, everyone has a job. Back of the pack = alert system. Middle of the Pack = rules and boundaries (they are the ones doing the investigating and making sure the behaviors don’t get out of hand). Front of the pack = protection and direction. So when your dog is barking and you yell at them to stop, you are essentially putting yourself in a back of the pack position by alerting also. If you tell them stop and they trust you, then you did your job. You essentially said “I got it”. No need to worry. Nevertheless trust is earned, not demanded.
Earn your dog’s trust by teaching. Ask your dog to stay on a bed, for example, and see if you can open the front or back door of where you live without them immediately getting up. If the answer is no, teach them that. By us showing them what behavior we want when, for example, someone comes in through a door, we are starting to show them that we have control of a situation. If your dog is barking at the window, bring them to a bed and don’t let them get out of the bed until they stop looking at the window and are sitting or laying down. Do this repeatedly. You are educating them: instead of alerting me, stay on your bed. Redirect the energy that is going into fight towards the window, into surrender on the bed. If you are away from home and are told that your dog barks continually, try to start crate training your dog. In their minds they need to protect themselves when you are not around. So they are constantly on alert. Ease their mind by giving them a place where they are totally off duty. A place that means relaxation. A den, if you will.
Barking dogs are dogs that are asking for direction. They are on alert overdrive and have not been taught that they are safe and have no need to keep alerting the pack. Think of the barking as the outcome of an unbalanced state of mind, or one that has not yet understood what their role in the pack should be. We can teach by giving direction. We can teach them that they are safe by providing them with a safe space when we are not around. If this sounds super simple, it is because it is. If we want our dogs to learn that we have no need for an alert system, we have to be willing to take the time to teach them that. It is as simple as that.
