Anxiety, barking and biting

[GraziaTraca]

Hi,

We have two labradoodles both 1year old. Prego, the bigger doddle barks and bite Nala when she doesn’t want to play with him while they are by themselves or home alone. At the dog park Prego will do the same but when Nala plays along other dogs that is not him. We don’t know what to do... we have him sit and stay until he calm down while at the park. But when we leave home we cannot control his excessive barking at Nala.
Prego, our caramel labradoodle will also jump and bark with high pitch when he sees other dogs when we taking on a walk. 
Please help! 

[Adrienne]

Hi there, 

Welcome to the forums!

It sounds like you have two dogs displaying different energy levels, however, it's interesting that this happens mostly contingent upon them being by themselves or when they are home alone. I get a feel that maybe Nala isn't too comfortable being left alone and the last thing she wants to do is play. This is quite normal as many dogs won't eat, drink or play when left alone. 

To prevent this type of "pestering", I feel that management may be the best strategy to solve the problem considering that, with us being away, there's not much we can do intervention-wise, unless we install some form of remote monitoring (like a Furbo camera) where we can always watch them and redirect them through voice, which is pretty unpractical in any case. Therefore, your next best bet would be to leave them in separated areas when you head out and about. 

This is not only good for preventing Prego from rehearsing the problematic behavior, while also allowing Nala to relax, but also for a matter safety. Even the best friend dogs may get into squabbles when left alone unsupervised. I must admit I have always left my dogs together when they were younger pups, until one day, out of the blue, I saw them get into a serious squabble over space in the car (Einstein always liked to go back and forth between windows, while Petra liked to stick to one window).

While they used to get into minor disagreements at times, this was more intense then usual, and I had to (for the very first time even in my life of owning them) intervene to remove the focus from each other (no biting, but many quick air snaps and lots of noise). I still wonder why this happened, maybe Petra was more achy from a recent orthopedic problem she was still recovering from, or may be Einstein really wanted to see something out of the window for once and didn't want to back down or maybe he reacted to her grumpy response. This made me think twice about leaving them home alone from then on, so Einstein went in one bedroom while Petra was kept in the other one. Peace of mind. 

While Nala may have tolerated this behavior up to a certain point, dynamics may change one day. All dogs have a breaking point, and sometimes the chances for reaching that point are more likely when dogs are not feeling well or are stressed or just find a need to escalate as if saying "what point of my request for being left alone, don't you understand?" Sometimes, things change as the dogs mature. So we need to keep this into consideration. One of my clients had two dogs who were best buddies, only that one dog had the habit of always licking the mouth of the other dog. This other dog seemed to tolerate this for some time, until one day he had enough, reacted and they got into a major squabble requiring stitches. 

The jumping and barking on walks sounds more like barrier frustration considering that your dog seems like a happy-go-lucky guy who enjoys playing and going to the dog park. Barrier frustration occurs when dogs want to meet other dogs on leash, but are frustrated because they can't and therefore their frustration builds up to an "explosion" of lunging, whining and barking when seeing other dogs. These dogs are therefore normally friendly with other dogs off leash, but struggle when they are leashed. If that's the case, you may want to train an alternate behavior to engage in when walking (such as doing several steps of attention-heeling). 

You can read more about barrier frustration here: 

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/archive/barrier-frustration/

And here are directions for training heeling/attention heeling:

https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/brain-training/obedience-101/heeling-attention-heeling/

The behavior at the dog park, sounds like Prego playing the "fun police role" or maybe feeling frustrated that Nala ignores him when she's playing with other dogs. Once again, it's important to prevent rehearsal of the behavior, so we can either aim to train a very strong response to a cue that stops him in his tracks (like a solid leave it cue or the sit stay you mention), however, if this behavior keeps on happening and it so ingrained that you have to keep calling him over and over, your best bet may be once again management.  

So perhaps we can take turns having the dogs play. So you may send Nala to play while you have a helper keep Prego on leash from the other side of the fence (since many dog parks don't allow leashed dogs or have a helper hold him) and then have Prego play while Nala is kept on leash. To prevent frustration from being on leash and not being able to play, your helper may perhaps ask him to perform some training cues and reward with some treats (outside from the park area to prevent fights) or walk your dog around the park to distract him. 

I hope this helps!

Let me know if you have any questions!

Best,

Adrienne