Excited Barking

[s.dilbey]

Hello Adrienne

 

Please could you give me some advice on my 1 year old Samoyed. We have only had him 4 weeks and we are his fourth home. He has settled in very well a likes our 12 year old Samoyed.

My problem with him is, when I am doing his dinner he barks constantly. When he barks I stop and when he’s quite I start preparing it again, but it’s not really working. He just gets so excited. When we are out on a walk, they walk very well together, hardly pull at all. But when we stop to talk to someone we will get board and start to bark.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

Kind regards Stuart

[cammidge]

I would put him in his kennel with a Kong a few minutes prior to getting ready to prepare his food.

[Adrienne Farricelli]

Yes, management is your best bet to prevent rehearsal of the problematic barking. The more he is allowed to perform the undesirable behavior (barking during meal preparation) the more it will put roots and become more and more difficult to eradicate. You have several options here: Putting him in a crate, behind a baby gate or training him to go to his mat (you can find instructions on how to train a dog to use a crate or go on his mat in the archive) to enjoy a little "appetizer" is a good starting point to keep him busy.

 

If you want to work on this issue more actively, you need to be very persistent and determined. Your first meal preparations may take a while at first, but it is worth in the long run. Here are some tips to set him up for success:

 

-Make feeding him a breeze. If your meal preparation is too long, he'll be more likely to start getting impatient and barking, so give yourself a head start. Keep him in the yard, or have a helper walk him prior or keep him in another room with a helper to distract him. While he is there, get your food bowl ready, put the meal in it, keep it on a shelf or on the counter/table and then call your dog. (This makes an excellent opportunity to train a strong recall with these food motivated fellows).

-As soon as he reaches you, ask him for a sit and place the bowl on the floor. If he gets up from the sit, place the bowl behind your back and retry. Only quiet and a nice sit earns him the meal.

-Every day, make your meal preparation sessions a little bit longer. You need to go gradual and keep him under threshold. Baby steps.

 

Same goes with talking to people. Keep your talks very brief at first. Hello, shake hands, and then move on. If somebody is keeping you a little longer, ask your dog to target your hands every now and then to keep him busy and reward that, but keep these chit-chats short. Then, gradually increase the length. You may have to leave long chats for later on, once your dog has developed more impulse control, but this is for the sake of training. We do not want to allow rehearsal of the barking behavior.

Edited July 2, 2019 by Adrienne Farricelli