Barking and will not stop!

[kay r.]

I have a two year old sheltie, named Nellie. I have followed your books and she is well trained. Can heal on and off leash, does agility training, can sit stay, comes when called, enters the house after us, etc. BUT, I can not get her to stop barking. She barks when people come and when they go. I don't mind a few barks but she keeps it up. I have tried the training collar, closing her mouth firmly, teaching her to speak and then telling her not to speak when barking. The whole family is on board with all of these techniques and they do not work on her.

Question... I have an invisible fence for her. Works great! Also, have a hand set collar for use when I'm at the lake home. Could I use that correction collar to teach her to stop barking? Yet, I do not want her to get confused with her ability to roam the yards.

Please help!! I do not want to ruin what she already can do and the use of the invisible fence but she needs to stop barking!!

Thanks in advance for the advise.

K

[MaxHollyNoah]

Hi Kay,

I just read your Feb post too and I am not sure if Nellie's barking is aggression, or attention seeking, or excitment barks, or ???

I feel for you because Holly, one of my dogs, is a real barker too. She is a perfect dog if she doesn't bark. She is very smart so my husband and I always wonder why she cannot learn how to NOT bark. I think that is our fault though. We haven't been able to get our thought across to her. Barking seems to be a single problem to us people but it is not at all one action from Holly's mind. There are multiple reasons for her barkings and we need to deal each one of them separately.

She used to bark when I got home from work but we were successfully able to correct this behavior by going back to my car everytime she barked and didn't open the door until she got completely settled.

She barks alot with excitement evey time she sees even a very subtle sign of me going out with an anticipation of "I can go out with Mama!". This is really annoying and it makes me feel like I would rather take my other dogs instead. For this particular barking, I have been working with her to make her "down" and "wait" by the doorway until I am ready. She still barks at the beginning but when I remind her to "down and wait" she follows my instructions, although she looks so excited that even a fall of a straw can trigger her barking

She barks when someone comes to the door like Nellie does and we still cannot correct it. However, once we invite the person inside, she doesn't bark and she settles down quickly. No barking when he/she leaves.

She barks at even a slightest sound outside the house, including someone comes to the door of the house across the street but to be honest with you I don't want to fix this because I really like to have a alert guard dog when I am home alone. All I need to teach her is to "Thank you but that's enough for now" command

We adopted her 6 years ago so you can imagine how hard to correct this problem.

I would suggest you observe her barking and figure out reasons of each barking. If it is attention seeking, it's best to ignoring but if it is too much excitement that she can not handle without barking, it's best to give her a "work" (commands like sit or stay, or watch me!) to distract her from what she is so excited about.

I wish I could invent a pill that I can toss to Holly that shuts her up immediately

Good luck