Dog Community

oh the barking!!! gah

Posted : 5/3/2010 4:27:17 PM

Lately this has been driving me insane. Zoey is really good in some areas and REALLY bad in the others.

So what she does - when she's in the dog run on the northwest side of the house - when I walk onto the rest of the property, to walk out to the garden, to the garage, to the donkeys @ dinner time, anytime I walk away from the patio/dog run area, she barks her head off like crazy!

And it's a frantic whiney bark. Not a territorial bark. I think at some capacity she really thinks the chickens are going to attack & eat me. lol.

So I'm trying to figure out how to help her get over this. Rather than take her inside each time i need to walk around the yard and do work.

Right now I'm thinking it's more of a separation thing. I do leave her at home a couple times a week so she doesn't get too attached to me. And then she's fine. Its when she can actually see me walking away that she has a melt down. Most of the time she'll just keep barking & carrying on until I come back - once I'm at the patio she stops.

If I go out of sight, she stops pretty soon, so as long as she can see me she's pretty much barking.

So any tips?

I think priority #1 right now is getting the chickens cooped up, right now they just roam around.

I'm also thinking when I'm walking back towards her I should stop walking until she's quiet, then maybe C/T, then if she starts again I stop and wait until she's calm. In the front yard she was ok, although I don't go out there as much. She can't be out there right now, there's too many foxtails already.

what do you all think?

the latter one is very difficult lol I have work to be done around the property & I probably could spend every single day doing this for a month solid. lol. but it might be what needs to happen. Anyone have any other suggestions?

Also the reasons she can't go out with me yet - chickens, chicken poop, donkeys, donkey poop LOL not to mention if the donks decided they didn't like her!! We haven't gotten to that chapter yet. But I need to do it soon while she's still young - but I have to consult my dog people ( you guys) and my donk peoples.

JackieG

Posted : 5/3/2010 4:32:55 PM

akyramoto82
I'm also thinking when I'm walking back towards her I should stop walking until she's quiet, then maybe C/T, then if she starts again I stop and wait until she's calm.

I'd try this. ^

akyramoto82

Posted : 5/3/2010 4:37:37 PM

JackieG
akyramoto82
I'm also thinking when I'm walking back towards her I should stop walking until she's quiet, then maybe C/T, then if she starts again I stop and wait until she's calm.

I'd try this. ^

thats what I was thinking, I'd have to do it walking away too!! as soon as she sees me going past the end of the patio the chaos begins. GAH!! lol

And if anyone has any equine vs dog experience please chime in. In the past Daisy was great with Akyra, BElla & Amber - she didn't want to kill them anyways lol and they didn't want to chase her. From what I've seen part of Zoey wants to chase the donks, I think. or she just gets really excited about them)

I'm almost thinking - Tie Daisy ( put Martha in the pen), start walking Zoey up to Daisy, C/T for calmness. have them eventually meet - sniff noses, maybe a leg sniff.

tiffy

Posted : 5/3/2010 7:04:44 PM

Tootsie, began doing this when I would pick her up from my parents. She would bark, uncontollably. Have you ever had the pleasure of hearing a Corgi in full excited bark mode? Its extremely high- pitched, kinda like nails on a chalkboard. As soon as she would start barking, I would turn my back to her until she was quiet. If I turned around and she would start again, she would get my back to her. This took about a month of this for her to finally get the message. No attention for Tootsie is a fate worse than death to her. So keep at what your doing! It'll work. Zoes not dumb, so she should catch on quickly.

akyramoto82

Posted : 5/4/2010 9:45:17 PM

So I'm doing the back turning thing, it really seemed to get better yesterday, i was out in the yard working. not significantly better, but I could tell she was like 'wait! how come you're not looking at me!!'

then today she pulled a new one, now she barks when I open the slider, and runs to the end of the run barking - as if to protect it lol.

so I did the same thing. go to the porch, open the slider, barking, oops I'm going back in, then whiney/demand barking, quiet, try again. I think I spent 15 min the first time trying to get out the door! I know eventually she'll get the point.

I think this particular scenario is really hard to clicker train since many times I'm a good 20' away from the dog run.

spiritdogs

Posted : 5/6/2010 8:50:08 AM

akyramoto82
I think this particular scenario is really hard to clicker train since many times I'm a good 20' away from the dog run.

Just because you wouldn't be able to hear the clicker that far away doesn't mean your dog can't. I used that to train Sequoyah not to whine when I left her alone in the training hall if I had to go downstairs. If she was quiet, I clicked, then ran up and heaved a treat over the gate;-)