What's With All the Barking?

Wow, we haven't posted in almost a month! Our mom has had this sinus infection and has been so tired all the time, so she hasn't been much help with the computer. She's tired today, too. One of our neighbors started barking early in the morning, and it upset me very much, so I had to go lie in bed with her because I knew she couldn't sleep through it either.

I totally understand it. I'm a barker. But my mom is always getting requests, "how do I stop my dog from barking," so I thought I'd tell you how she stopped me. I used to bark at everything -- every time someone walked by, every time there was a loud noise, every time the neighbors barked. Now, I still sometimes bark, but I stop when Mom tells me to.

The first thing that she did was realize my limitations. How was she going to teach me not to bark if I spent all day in a front yard with a four-foot fence? I acted like I loved going out in that yard, but I didn't. I was just stressed out. Once she realized that, it was a big step forward in our relationship. She put up curtains in the living room and started playing the TV for white noise when she wasn't home. When I would bark too much, she would put me in the bedroom, where it was quiet and I could relax. We'll come back to this in a minute.

She made a command that means stop barking. For me, it's "let's go" because she mostly needs it to bring me in from the yard. To teach it, she had to have a leash on me in the yard. If I was barking, she'd say, "let's go." If I stopped barking, she would give me a treat and I would stay in the yard. If not, she grabbed the leash and led me back into my private room to calm down. This really helped me because it taught me how to calm down. I had a choice: I could either be quiet in the yard or go in and calm down. Sometimes, I couldn't calm down. But if I could, and I wanted to stay in the yard, I'd make the right choice. Now, I come in when she says "let's go" without a leash, and sometimes, when I'm stressed, I just go into the bedroom on my own. I know how to do it. It's nice to have those skills.

Love, Muggsy