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I actually bought one of the collars for my excessively barking English Bulldog. His favorite activity for a while was to stare at my FI and me while we sat on the couch and bark. For no reason. What a joy! The collar didn't really work for us. I think the barking was related to other issues. We ended up taking him for more walks and giving him more attention, and it has seemed to help. I think he is basically just a very frustrated dog.
I do agree that you should not give the dog attention while she is barking. That might just fuel the fire.
we have a no bark collar for our chocolate lab. They make many kinds now - citronella spray, water spray, sound, zap. Ours is remote controlled, and has both the sound and the shock to it. We start with the sound as a warning, if he doesnt stop we shock him. I can attest to it, it did work for us. Now we just pick up the remote and he stops. Id at least give it a try, the ones made for little dogs dont deliver too much of a shock. And if that is really repulsive to you (no judgement, I was horrified at first but it worked lol) then try the citronella spray collar.
Another option (didnt work for us) is to get a spray bottle and spray him when he starts. Our dog loved being sprayed s that was a huge fail...
I also use a bark collar on my english setter. She is deaf, and most deaf dogs either never bark, or bark nonstop. She barks nonstop. I always forget to charge it though, and she has learned that when the light blinks it's dying, so she knows when its safe to bark. It works when it's charged, though! I have yet to meet someone who has used them on small dogs, though, so I'm not sure about those.
As for most dogs, barking is just a form of releasing energy, so perhaps when you get home, take her outside right away for a walk. Let her get some energy out before going back inside and see if that helps.
Kelly V also has a good point about the spray bottle. A water vinegar mixture works wonders, you just have to be consistent like everything else.
Our dog, Louie, had a bit of an adjustment period when we moved into a new house last fall. He would just bark at every little noise, or every single person he could see out of the front room window. Part of the problem was helped by taking him for more walks around the neighborhood. Once he strated to feel more comfortable in our house, he started barking less.
For the rest of the barking, we did some treat training. Basically, when he would start to bark, we would put him in the "sit" position. We would then give the "quiet" command," and when he stopped barking, we would give him a treat. If he tried to get up or started barking again, we would tell him "sit" and then "quiet" again. Usually 15 minutes or so of this kind of distraction would calm him down enough for us to let him up from sitting. We did it every day (multiple times a day), and now if he starts barking, we tell him "sit" and "quiet" and he will calm down enough in 2-3 minutes that we can let him back up.
Also, our dog George barks like crazy when we come home at lunch/after work. For him, he just gets so worked up being in his kennel all day that he gets too excited and can't control himself. For him, we don't greet him/pet him/etc... when we get home. We just immediately put on his leash and take him for a walk. Usually the minute we step outside he stops barking, and then we can greet him for a moment. Since he only barks for maybe 1-2 minutes before he is outside on a walk, his barking doesn't bother us too much.
Our dog likes to bark at the TV. We use a spray bottle filled with 1/3 Bitter Apple and 2/3 water. When he barks, we tell him to "hush." If he doesn't, we grab his mouth and open it and spray one spritz directly into his mouth. He hates the taste, and it really does quiet him down. We got that tip from our Petsmart trainer who doesn't like harsh correction methods.
We have a shock collar, but we don't use that for barking. The dog has no idea why it's being corrected.
I wonder if you walk your dog? Usually a pent up dog is more likely to bark. Backyards and playing fetch in the house don't count, a lot of dogs need the experience of leaving the house on the leash!
Mostly it's important that you creat a POSITIVE command to get him to stop barking (like quiet or hush) so that you can discipline him not following a specific command. Unfortunately, you have a chihuahua/terrier which is the genetic combination most likely to bark. (Add beagle in there and you have a trifecta!) You're working against his instincts, so it'll take a lot of effort and patience.
Thanks so much for all the comments!
To answer some questions, we always walk our dog when we first wake up, right after we get home and right before bed. At night when we're home, we take a lot of time to play with her and try to tire her out as much as possible. On the weekends, we take her out for four walks instead of three. So I would be confident in saying she gets enough activity.
The only other weird thing is that she seriously never barks any other time. Not even when she hears neighbors come home when we're there. She never makes a peep! I think that's why we're so frustrated.
I think we'll try the spray bottle next, but my only question is, if we start spraying her, will she equate us coming home to a bad thing, or will she know it's because of the barking?
I have a chihuahua mix, too & I've gotten complains that he'll bark REALLY bad when we're not at home!!! This was while we lived in our old apartment, though. I didn't know how to fix this problem but ever since we've lived in our new apartment (on the 3rd floor) we never get any complaints or ever hear him bark anymore. I just got a little radio and put it beside his cage so there's more noise than just what he hears outside. A lot of times it's stress anxiety, either they miss you or they're just barking at whatever they hear since it's soo quiet. I think little radio's def. help & maybe turn on a fan or something!
@chapstick - Dont make spraying him the first thing you do, otherwise he might equate it with that. Like @MightySapphire said, you need to give him a command THEN spray him for disobeying. Be consistent and he'll get it
Just a note - we just bought a no bark collar for our dog yesterday, and he hasn't figured out yet that it means he's not supposed to bark. Right now, he barks, gets shocked, and then barks AT the collar. It's a bad cycle, lol! We're hoping that he'll figure out that if he doesn't bark he doesn't get shocked, but he definitely hasn't caught on yet.
We also found that those cans of air that you use to clean keyboard and stuff works REALLY well for our dog! He likes to bark and us when we hug, but he hates having the air sprayed at him - so as soon as we pick it up he stops barking!
@amanda.lynn: Poor thing, LOL! I would have a hard time not laughing at that. My friend's dog did that with the citronella collar. Never could figure out why it was getting sprayed!
@MissChapstick: like KellyV said, the spray is only a disciplinary measure for not obeying your "hush" command. We also have hand signals for all of our commands, some dogs react more to hand signals. For "hush" we put our finger to our mouth. Really exaggerate it as you say "hush!"
Also, if you didn't know what Bitter Apple is, here is a link. We also use it to keep the cats from eating the Christmas tree and TV wires, LOL.
In my experience, clicker training works really really well, especially if your dog is food motivated. We bought Clicking With Your Dog, but you might be able to find something similar at the library. It has a lot of solutions for common problems, barking is one of them. You can get clickers cheap at pet stores. I like it because there are no negative consequences, only positive, and the clicker helps them know EXACTLY what you want. It takes a little bit of practice to get the timing right, but once you do, it's actually a lot of fun. We taught our dog all kinds of nifty tricks, including "leave it" which is great because she loves to chew stuff.
thanks all, these are some great tips! our newest one barks incessantly when i get home, and also barks when she hears someone passing by our apartment door. must go into training mode now.
There have been some great ideas here to try before going to the extreme of a shock collar. The spray collars are only slightly better. Harsh corrections like a shock collar can hurt or even traumatize a dog. http://animal.discovery.com/videos/its-me-or-the-dog-shock-collars.html
But yeah, definitely try some of the positive training ideas suggested. It sounds as if she is getting enough physical exercise, but if she is spending a bit of time in her crate, she may be in need of more mental stimulation. They have all kinds of toys made to make a dog give their brain a workout, and/or you can do trick training or even play with her, (make her be quiet before you play with her, even if it's just for a few seconds at first, since you don't want to teach her to bark when she wants to play!). Also, I would try leaving her alone for a few minutes, (just step outside of the apartment for five minutes), and then come back. Reward her if she's quiet, with attention, toys, treats, whatever SHE values. Do the five-minute thing for bit, then gradually increase the time. You want her to realize that you'll be back, and that it's not such a big deal when you DO come back, (and the shorter trips at first may help her not get so worked up that you're back).
As another Bee suggested, spraying a can of compressed air into the air works great. We always give a sharp "Ah!" noise when they do something we don't like, especially because the noise usually interrupts them for a moment. Then when she stops barking, praise her, play with her, or whatever. If she goes back to barking, or doesn't stop at all, then we spray the can of air. I don't ever spray it AT them, just the noise (and probably the smell) are deterrent enough.
Clicker training is also a great idea. If you don't have a clicker, you can always use a marker word, (a lot of people prefer a marker word, just because your voice is always with you, whereas a clicker may not be). The only difference is, instead of clicking, you just use a marker word, such as "YES!" when they do what you want.
Good luck, and let us know how it goes!
Wow, thanks so much again, ladies! So many helpful tips! I'm taking all these to the hubs tonight so we can decide what to do together :)
I've tried EVERYTHING mentioned above, and my dog still barked like CRAZY all the time. FI and I went to "Bark Busters" (actually, they came to us), and 24 hours later, her barking is down to about 1/100th of what it was. SO WORTH IT!!
My sister and her BF got one of those bark collars that spray some citrus sent in their face. It doesn't hurt them at all, but they hate it and won't bark becuase they don't want to be sprayed!
I used to work at a boarding kennel. We couldn't let the dogs bark too much because it was set back kind of in a quarry and would echo until it was super loud over at the neighbors house. I had to use the collar several times on different dogs and I must say that it worked amazingly well, especially since I had never dealt with these dogs before and yet they responded almost immediately. For such a small dog I don't think I'd want to use a shock collar. You'd be better off using one of the alternatives, or if you don't want to spend that much money, just go pick up a squirter bottle and spray her whenever she starts barking. My parents did that with all of the dogs we've had as it works quite well. They fostered approximately 15-20 different great danes while I was living with them and it was the best method for dogs. I know that many people say that putting collars on dogs is bad and horrible, but it does retrain them rather quickly in most cases.
We had the same objections about the shock no bark collars at first. But it has truly been a life saver! And because when we got the collar we wanted to really know what we were putting the dogs through so we actually both shocked ourselves at the high level and low level so we could know exactly what was happening. Honestly ours at the lowest level was attention getting but not exactly painful - more like a bad static shock. The highest level definitely had some serious sting to it but after getting my hand shocked still I didn't feel like I would be causing severe trauma to them. Our system does have the beep sound built into it for a warning. Unfortunately when we moved to the house we are in now we realized that the dishwasher makes the exact same beep as the collars and it freaks the dogs out when they hear it because they know that they have not been barking. So when we do dishes we just make sure to keep the dogs outside or in another room.
Also because our dogs responded so well to the no bark electric collars we decided to use a wireless fencing system until we build a permanent fence. And yes at first the dogs were confused why they were being shocked because they were wondering too far away from the house but not barking but they have it figured out now. The don't bark and Bella knows exactly where the electric fence line is because she will be at a full run then go into a dead stop if she is getting close to the line.
I just want to second what a lot of people have said:
For some reason my dog likes the bitter apple... I don't know why- but she HATES water (much like a cat) so I'm just throwing that out there too :o)
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I need some advice from other doggie owners!
We have a three-year old Chihuahua/Yorkie mix. We adopted her from a family that could no longer care for her when she was a year old. The first year that we had her, she was really shy. She warmed to us in about a week, but with other people, it took more time (she wasn't aggresive, just shy). Since we've had her, we've crated her during the day after finding out our first night that she has a tendancy to chew things. We asked our vet and she seems to think it's out of boredom, and we decided to crate her while we're at work.
Our problem is that when we get home from work, she barks excessively. She NEVER barks at any other time. She used to bark a lot when we put her in her crate before leaving for the day, but we started giving her treats when we left, and she stopped that same day.
The barking is really, really bad when we get home. It will start when we walk through the front door of our building (and we're on the thrid floor of our walk-up). We did some research, and most everything we read said to just ignore her when we get home, which we tried for about a month and a half, and it didn't do anything. She would just bark and bark, and 20 mins later, still barking. We had to give up because, well, we can stand around waiting to take her outside for 20 mins. We've thought about the no-bark collars for small dogs, and I just don't think I can bring myself to do it, but would consider it more seriously if other people can attest to it working, and not being harmful to the dog. We live in an apartment building, and one of our neighbors started to complain.
One other thing I should mention is that we've been experimenting with leaving her out of her crate while we're away for shorter periods of time, and even after an hour of being gone, she barks excessively.
I'm just reaching out to my fellow bees to see if they have any words of advice!