Hunter's Heart Brittanys - Stopping Nuisance Barking

We received a letter from an owner of one of our Brittany Spaniels. Their 2 year old Brittany barks mostly outside in the fenced yard. She barks at the neighbor’s cats that sit outside. And sometimes she barks at the neighbors’ house for no apparent reason. It’s a nuisance for the owners and the neighbors. If your dog is a nuisance barker with a story like this, here are some thoughts on how to deal with the problem.

Shake Cans

Make your own shake can by filling an empty pop bottle with coins, and taping the opening shut. To be used most effectively, the can must seem to fall from the sky & not be associated with the owner. When your dog is barking, throw the can so it lands close to them on the ground.

Mental and Physical Exercise

Some dogs bark because they don’t get enough exercise. Or not enough interaction with humans e.g. companionship, snuggling and play. A Brittany who doesn’t go walking daily for at least 30 minutes is more likely to misbehave. This is usually the first thing to rule out when trying to decrease barking.

Spray Water

We have a lot of success at home with spraying water in the barking dog’s face to correct for barking. They all still enjoy water, i.e. jumping in a river on a walk. But they don’t enjoy being sprayed in the face. When your dog is barking, scold instructively by saying “Silent”. (This gives the dog more information than scolding “No”.) And immediately spray the dog with water. We’ve bought a set of spray bottles from Costco & keep one full of water in the car, the van, the living room, and the bedroom. Anywhere barking tends to happen. The ones we use allow a direct “hit” up to about 15 feet.

As with any correction, if you do it 5 seconds after the behavior is finished, you’re too late. If you don’t correct within 3-5 seconds, don’t bother to correct at all. The dog very much lives in the present moment, and won’t think back & relate the correction to the behavior if you’re too late!

Other people find it effective to spray with other liquids, such as spraying lemon juice into the dog’s mouth. But if you’re going to spray lemon juice, you have to make sure you don’t accidentally spray the dog in the eyes & harm her. Since water works for us, we don’t bother with other liquids that you have to aim carefully.

Teach Bark and Quiet on Command

Many other trainers recommend teaching your dog to start and stop barking on command to deal with problem barking. (I haven’t found this to be helpful with my Brittanys so far. Once we trained our youngest for a fun “Woof Relay”, he began to offer barking sometimes when he wasn’t sure what I wanted during training sessions. Some dogs that are already very noisy may not benefit from encouragement to bark. Having said that, it might work for you and your individual dog.)

Start by teaching your dog to bark on command. Start by noticing when your dog is barking on her own initiative. (If you’re using a clicker, click now to indicate the correct behavior i.e. barking.) Say “good speak” or “good guard”, or whatever word you’re going to use for the command to bark. Then praise and/or give a treat. Repeat this over & over until the dog learns to associate barking with you saying the word “speak”.

The next step is to say “speak” and hope your dog barks in response. (You could encourage the dog to speak by doing something exciting that tends to cause barking). When your dog barks, say “good speak” with very enthusiastic praise and/or treat and/or play as a reward. Repeat over and over. (You can have several practice sessions a day, but only ask the dog to speak two or three times per session. You want learning to be fun, and more repetition than this may bore the dog.) If your dog won’t speak on command, go back to the beginning. The dog just hasn’t learned yet to associate the word “speak” with barking.

Once your dog knows to speak on command, start teaching him to stop barking on command too. It works like this: you say speak, she responds by barking. While she’s barking, say “Quiet”. Reward as soon as the dog stops barking. If your dog won’t stop barking, you can offer a piece of food; it’s difficult to bark and chew at the same time.

With training any new skill, start in a location with very few distractions. (For example, many dogs listen really well in the kitchen.) Dogs are very influenced by the environment and its particular distractions. (This is the way dogs learn. When you teach your dog not to lie on the blue couch, you still haven’t taught him that the other red couch is off limits. For every new situation, you have to re-teach the skill.) Once the dog is confident in your distraction-free kitchen, practice in new locations where there are more distractions. For example, move to the living room with the TV on, then with the children around, and finally to the back yard. In every new location, expect to start re-training from scratch. The process of learning the command won’t take as long as the very first time, but it’s a normal thing to have to re-learn the skill in new situations.

Don’t Join In

One thing not to do is to yell at your dog while he’s barking in an attempt to make him stop. The dog will think you’re joining in the fun with your yelling. Then she’ll get excited and bark even more. Practice giving your command “quiet” (or whatever word you use) in a quiet voice. The dog must learn to listen to you and respond; you shouldn’t ever have to yell. Dogs have very good hearing and can hear a quiet voice. If you get into the habit of giving several repeat commands, each getting louder and louder, you’re teaching the dog to ignore your quiet voice. That’s teaching a bad habit. (Verbal corrections should also be given quietly. But let your play be as loud and enthusiastic as you and your dog find fun.)

Ignore It and It Will Go Away

You might have read or heard of situations where trainers advise people to ignore their dog’s barking and it will go away. This can work in certain situations. Such as when the dog wants more attention. And has learned that if she barks and jumps up, the human will respond (even if it’s scolding that happens.) So in this case, the dog is barking partly because the human is rewarding the barking behavior by giving the dog attention.

This training strategy might not transfer well to your specific situation. If your Brittany Spaniel is barking in the yard while you’re away, you aren’t rewarding the behavior and encouraging her to continue. So if you just ignore it, the barking won’t lessen.

I just wanted to mention this strategy in case you’re considering it. When you’re trying to decrease barking, you should tailor what you do to the reasons why the dog is barking.

If you ever wanting to consult “an expert” about any behavioral problem, look for somebody who won’t just have a single plan they hope will cover everybody. They should be able to watch you and your dog interacting, and suggest a few plans tailored to your situation. That way, if plan A doesn’t work, you still have the option of plan B. Don’t give up; keep trying.

Purchasing Equipment for Bark Control

There are lots of products you can buy to help with bark control. Of these, I think the best are the citronella collar and Kongs.

There’s lots of other equipment you can buy, but we believe the other products to be less effective. For example, some bark stoppers make a sound automatically in response to barking or any other loud noise. (The sound may be heard by humans or ultrasonic & not audible to humans.) The sound is unpleasant for dogs and startles the dog, hopefully stopping the problem barking. (This works like a shake can does.) Dog Fancy February 2001 commented: “A study found citronella collars 89% effective, compared to 44% for shock collars”; it’s a bit sketchy on how results were quantified.

We reserve our electronic collars mainly for enforcing the come command, off lead in distracting situations, once the dog has already learned the command. It’s our preference not to use the electronic collar to teach something new.

Kongs

If you aren’t using Kongs as a distraction yet, we recommend them highly. A Kong is a rubber toy with a hole in the middle, sold in most pet stores. You can stuff the Kong with food. When you go out, leave a stuffed Kong or two for your dog. The dog will naturally focus on getting the food out of the Kong. Instead of focusing on barking at things she sees outside the window. Or barking at noises he hears. Or destroying household objects… For dogs who are allowed to wander the house when their owner is away, you can hide the stuffed Kongs around the house. Looking for the Kongs becomes part of the game too.

There are lots of ways to stuff a Kong. You can buy Rollover in a pet store, cut it into cubes, & stuff them into the Kong. You can fill your Kong with Cheese Wiz and microwave it. (Kongs are microwave and dishwasher safe). The cheese will stick to the insides of the Kong & be very hard to reach. For a Kong that lasts longer, you can grind up dog food or meat and add water. (You’ll probably need to put it in a bowl to keep the water from just running out of the end.) Then freeze it. Once frozen, the food is more difficult for the dog to get out of the Kong; the process should take hours instead of minutes.

We commonly leave our Brittanys with Kongs when we go out, and they really enjoy them.

The Kong company has many creative recipes online at:
http://www.kongcompany.com/how2use.html. Another site with Kong stuffing recipes (and many other good recipes for treats) is: http://www.bowchow.com/treatref.html#kongs For example, use peanut butter as the glue to hold together a mixture of treats of various sizes.

Citronella Collars

Many different models are available at different prices. One model recommended to us by our obedience instructor had a button to press that caused the collar to spray the dog. (It didn’t automatically spray when it sensed loud noises or vibrations. If you use these type of sensors, sometimes the collar will make a mistake and spray for a loud noise other than barking.) There were about 10 different settings that controlled the intensity of the spray. This way, you could adjust the collar so that your individual dog gets just enough spray to stop her barking, and not more than necessary. (Every dog has a different tolerance.)

This type of citronella collar is good because you can keep the transmitter with you whenever you’re home (e.g. wear it on a string around your neck). You can correct the dog for barking within seconds, even when the dog is far away. In comparison, running to the dog to squirt her with water would take far longer & so it would be less effective.

White Noise

Another thing you can do to decrease barking while you’re out is to leave the TV on. Or the stereo with classical music playing. We find this helpful, as do many other long-time dog owners we know. Some people also report that an old-fashioned ticking clock is soothing. (In a puppy, the idea is that the clock’s rhythm sounds like his mother’s heart beating while he was in the womb.)

Some Barking Is Normal

All of these training tips should help to decrease barking to a level acceptable to you and your neighbors. But you’ll never stop the barking altogether. Barking is normal dog behavior and it’s self-rewarding. (No human training is required. Barking naturally feels good for the dog.)

Your dog may be able to eventually have the run of your fenced yard when you’re not home. (Once you know she can be trusted not to bark so much it drives the neighborhood crazy.) This is especially true of older dogs who’ve “settled down” as they matured. But every dog is different. Some dogs will always be better off confined to a crate, a room of their own, the basement, or a dog run when left alone.

If seeing the neighbor’s cats is causing your Brittany to bark, confining her to an area where she can’t see the cats is a good strategy for decreasing the barking.

I hope some of these suggestions are helpful. If you don’t have any luck, please write & we’ll think of some more strategies. If something in particular does work for you, we’d like to hear about that too!