Bark! Bark! Bark!....Help!!!

JackieG

The only way to not reward the dog for barking is to take the dog off the starting line if it barks.  Barking means no birds.  It takes a dedicated trainer to remove themselves from the competition and recieve no score, in order to train the dog not to bark.  Some judges are more lenient than others but I've seen dogs failed for this when they have awesome retrieving skills otherwise.

I want Sophia Yin to come live with me for a few weeks :)

I started working on a calm/settle exercise based on a kikopup video and I'm super impressed already. I will try to find more of those types of exercises and work on them.

Just watching those videos, I see things I do wrong all the time, such as accidentally reinforcing the behavior you're trying to eliminate

Tena - I liked your idea and it might be worth trying but Shane isn't typically one to hang on to his stuffies. I can see where this might work with some dogs though and it would be a great idea.

cakana

Do you think the dog actually associates "I barked so I didn't get to have fun*? Maybe I don't give them enough credit for how smart they are.

They do make the association but it takes time and training. The trainer also needs to be reinforcing quiet and attaching a cue word to the "quiet" behavior.  It's not something that's learned in just a few repetitions.  Some dogs are never able to completely overcome their excitement barking and especially if the dog has been rewarded a few times when it did bark.  That danged intermittent reinforcement again. lol

I'd love to go live with Sophia Yin for a few months or years. :) 

Twister was an excitement barker.  I never really worked on it because it was just part of his personality and his genetics.  Well, I did at first but once it got through my thick head that he wasn't a retriever I was able to let some things go about his behavior.  It didn't bother me much because it was situational and I figured he was just expressing his joy even if it was sometimes ear piercing. lol  I used to be much more inclined to try and control and change any sort of behavior that I deemed wrong or annoying.  Twister taught me that sometimes you have to love the dog for who they are and enjoy their enthusiasm. :)

ETA: I wanted to clarify that training a dog not to bark in a retriever competition shouldn't and can't be done during a competition.  That happens during training set ups with groups of people taking turns, just like in a field trial or hunt test.  The reason many dogs never are able to successfully overcome the excitement barking in competition is the dog was allowed to bark in training scenarios.  People don't want to spend their entire training session not letting their dog retrieve a bird because the retrieving is the fun part. :) But if you can't ever get the dog to be quiet in training it definitely won't happen when you're on the line in competition. Even people who use their retrievers strictly for hunting often regret not working on the problem because it's not much fun to be sitting or standing next to a dog who is barking non stop. Kind of ruins the ambience for the owner and any friends who are along.

JackieG

Twister was an excitement barker.  I never really worked on it because it was just part of his personality and his genetics.  Well, I did at first but once it got through my thick head that he wasn't a retriever I was able to let some things go about his behavior.  It didn't bother me much because it was situational and I figured he was just expressing his joy even if it was sometimes ear piercing. lol  I used to be much more inclined to try and control and change any sort of behavior that I deemed wrong or annoying.  Twister taught me that sometimes you have to love the dog for who they are and enjoy their enthusiasm. :)

As for the intermittent reinforcers - you are so right and we are really guilty of that. Shane greets DH at the door like he's been gone for months and DH loves it. That alone has reinforced the over-exuberance that Shane exhibits. DH has tried to dial it back a little lately and reinforce for being calmer but there's a lot of damage to undo.