Demand Behavior

jumping up

By your own standards, your dog’s life may not seem all that stressful – after all, he doesn’t have bills to pay, does he? But when you apply the more scientific definition of the word – anything that alarms or excites him, triggering his sympathetic nervous system into action and flooding him with the “fight or flight” chemicals adrenaline and noradrenaline – you may be able to see how many seemingly unrelated things in his environment actually contribute to his “misbehavior.”

Barking is a natural, normal canine behavior. If you have a dog, you need to understand and accept that sometimes dogs bark! Dogs bark for a variety of reasons. How you work to manage and modify your dog's barking will depend, at least in part, on what motivates him to bark.Step one of any good dog barking modification program is minimizing your dog's need and opportunity to bark. Exercise, an important element of many good behavior modification programs, is useful here as well. A tired dog has less energy, hence less need to bark, and a well-exercised dog tends to be emotionally healthier as well.

Every dog who barks has a reason for it. Every dog who barks has a reason for it. Determining the cause of barking though depends on the individual context.

Training a dog to "drop it!" is extremely useful, but what about when you're dealing with a resource-guarding dog, or a dog who insists...

Dogs whine for a variety of reasons. Understanding your dog's motivation for whining will lead you to the appropriate modification approach. Misinterpreting the whine, or simply chastising or otherwise punishing your dog for whining, can exacerbate the behavior and even give rise to other more serious behavioral issues. Consider these possible causes.

I can't tell you how many times someone has said to me, I don't give my dog ‘people food' because I don't want him begging at the table while we're eating." If this sounds like you

Those last few minutes of sleep before the alarm goes off are a treasured sanctuary where we hide in dreams before the reality of the world intrudes. Few dog owners appreciate their canine pals robbing them of those golden moments. But some dogs seem to have an uncanny knack for anticipating the alarm by 15 or 20 minutes, and manage to routinely do just that. Of course, puppy owners expect to be awakened by their baby dogs – or they should. It's unreasonable to think a young puppy can make it through the night without a potty break.

It's feeding time at the Miller household. All is calm until I pick up Scooter's bowl to carry it to the laundry room where the little Pomeranian can eat without harassment from the larger dogs. As I lift the bowl from the counter, Scooter erupts with high-pitched barking and spinning, and Lucy the Corgi joins in with her deeper-but-still-sufficiently irritating vocals. It's more of an annoying bit of ritual than a dangerous or disturbing one, but it's annoying just the same, and one that would be nice to extinguish.

Dogs bark for many reasons. If you want to modify your dog's barking behavior (either decrease it or increase it) it's helpful to know what kind of barking your dog is doing, how the behavior is being reinforced, and what to do about it. We'll discuss the various reasons dogs bark, and how each type of barking can be countered with positive training and smart management.

Dogs bark to communicate. If we start with that simple understanding, the idea of dealing with a “problem barker” becomes a whole lot easier. It changes our focus from doing anything we can to make the dog “shut up,” to figuring out what the dog is trying to say – so we can address his concerns, and finding more constructive and quieter ways for communication to occur. We’ve asked two canine behavior experts to step in and help us solve the barking problem.

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