Ask Jean Donaldson

Q: My dog used to be quiet and good as
gold. But increasingly, she’s barking at people in the street and now
she’s barking even when we’re home and she hears noises, like people in
the hallway of our apartment building. I say "no" firmly but it doesn’t
seem to do any good. How can I nip this burgeoning barking problem in
the bud?-Lindsay, Toronto, ON

A: In the next couple of
decades, it could be the answer will be a genetic alteration: this
sounds like a slam-dunk developmental onset, bred-in, watchdog thing.
For now, we’ll have to rely on training and increased stimulation.

First
the training. You need beefier consequences than "no" said firmly. Try
three minutes incarceration in the bathroom. But warn first. After a
few barks, say, "Thanks for the alert. Enough now, please." Then, at
the very next bark, say "Oooh, too bad for you" and whisk the little
demon up and unceremoniously into jail. At the end of three minutes,
check whether she’s quiet in there, because letting her out is a
whopping big reward and we want to lay that juicy reward on quietness.

After
doing this many times, there’s a very good chance she’s going to start
heeding the "enough now" warning. When she does this, give her a
spectacular food reward, such as smelly cheese or roast chicken, along
with some gooey gratitude. She’ll be hit and miss for a while so you’ll
need to be snappy with both kinds of consequence until she’s slick.

It
would also help to tire her out more on a daily basis. Hard exercise,
such as a fifteen minute game of fetch or tug, and training, to tire
her out mentally, are the gold standard. If she’s already obedient,
teach her tricks. Get yourself a clicker, a bag of treats, and a how-to
opus and give her some calculus-for-dogs every day. ■

Jean
Donaldson is the founder of the San Francisco SPCA Academy for Dog
Trainers and author of several books on dog training and behaviour,
including Dogs are from Neptune and The Culture Clash.