Demand Barking

[TamaraGibson]

One of my dogs, a Portuguese Water Dog, loves the water and swimming.  However, every time we go to the water, he becomes overly excited and starts barking AT me as soon as we get in the water (we believe he is just super excited) for the first several minutes until we are actively swimming.  He barks AT me anytime he wants me to swim, walk, etc.  I can be sitting on my paddle board and he will bark at me until I actually get ahead of him and he is swimming to keep up.  It is hard to get past the first few minutes of him excessively barking and nothing seems to work for him.  I have tried ignoring him, yelling at him. rewarding him when he is quiet, and nothing works.  I have turned my back on him, waited until he is quiet, and as soon as I turn around, he starts up again. 

[Adrienne]

Hi there, and welcome to the forums!

Interesting behavior. 

In such cases we need to find exactly what triggers the behavior (antecedent) and what's the reinforcing consequence for the behavior which keeps it alive and persisting. From your description it seems like there may be several dynamics going on.

It seems like the barking is initially evoked by your going in the water (with him entering the water too, I assume). As you describe this, it may be just excitement from a vocal dog who simply loves water to the moon and back. The goal of this barking may therefore be to just simply "vent" and express a strong emotion until his excitement gradually wanes after being in the water for some time. 

However, it seems like there is some demand/attention seeking barking going on too since you mention he barks at you when you are static and he wants you to do something such as swim, walk, etc. In this case, the reinforcing consequence is you doing something perhaps because you really need to do something or just to make him stop his barking (which makes sense if there are people nearby who may get annoyed by the repeated barking).

There are several things we can try in this scenario to tackle this form of barking.  It may take trying several approaches and seeing which works best considering that we might not know exactly what is triggering the barking, but we can just make some assumptions. 

1) You can try engaging him with an activity that is incompatible with barking. In this case, I am thinking getting some floating toys for dogs that we can get him excited in carrying. Being that he is a Portuguese water dog, a breed selectively bred to retrieve gear and water messages from boat to boat, he may have a natural inclination to carry things in his mouth. With his mouth occupied, hopefully this may lead to decreased barking.

2) Once in the water, you may then further keep him busy by tossing toys for him to go retrieve and bring back (if he likes to fetch). This can give him something to do so that he doesn't feel the need to persistently bark at you and while he's at it, he gets a workout too. The disadvantage of this though is that he may then start barking to play retrieve, but at least his mouth will be busy carrying things most of the time. You can prevent reinforcing this type of barking by tossing the toys when he looks up at you and is quiet. 

2) You can try to train a solid sit/stay (look up how to in the obedience 101 section of the course) to hold away from the water until you call him. You will have to train this well at home, then in the yard, and then in places with gradually more distractions until you get a strong response. Once you get that, you can ask him to down/stay (when dogs lie down it is less likely for them to bark, although this isn't a general rule of thumb) as you carry your stuff in the water and are in the water with a head-start. Then, you can call him, and since he seems not to bark when he needs to catch up, hopefully this will discourage him from engaging in that initial barking. You can then toss him a floating toy to reward him once he catches up. 

3) You can invite your dog on the paddle board with you. Maybe he's barking because he feels left out? I know there are some traction pads that can be used on a paddle board to allow dogs on them. I am not an expert on this, so not sure how it works. 

4) Ignoring. I know you tried ignoring when he barks to get you to walk or do something, but we need to keep in mind the phenomenon of extinction bursts. In other words, the more you ignore your dog, the more his barking will increase (initially). When you ignore him initially he may therefore bark louder, more insistently and he may even try other behaviors (pawing at you, grabbing your clothes) to get you to pay attention. This makes it seem like our ignoring isn't working. If we keep on ignoring the extinction bursts though, we will eventually extinguish the barking (gets weaker and eventually to a stop as it's no longer reinforced) , but if instead we give in at this point, we will make the barking behavior stronger than before because we will have reinforced persistence. So we can try totally ignoring him when he barks to get you to walk, swim or do something (make sure somebody with you though keeps an eye on him to make sure he stays safe and out of trouble) until he realizes that his barking no longer works.

While this method can work, however, there are some things to consider. For instance, what if his behavior is due to anxiety? Perhaps he is barking because he doesn't want to be left alone/behind or he gets tired swimming and is in conflict between following you all or going out of the water to rest a bit. What if he is thirsty? Hot? Or he is afraid of you leaving and having to swim a lot to keep up? We therefore need to make sure all our dogs needs are met and that the barking isn't due to anxiety/stress before trying to ignore dogs who may be communicating a new or fear with us.

Let me know how it goes. 

Best,

Adrienne