How to teach your dog to bark and to be quit on command
How to teach your dog to bark and to be quit on command
A dog who is barking without control, can be taught to bark on command and to be quit on command. For teaching a dog to be quit on command, you’ll first have to learn your dog to bark on command.
Start indoors with a favorite toy of your dog. Take the toy and stand backwards to your dog. If the dog wants it badly, he immediately (or after a while) will make some kind of sound. Maybe he starts with a whine, or maybe with a full bark. If he doesn’t respond, he doesn’t care a lot about the toy and you need to look for a different toy. It is also possible he is not very motivated. Then you choose between waiting for a better moment or get him motivated by playing with the toy first.
As soon as he makes a sound, turn around and throw the toy towards him. This is the reward for making the sound. He gets what he wants. Repeat this several times until he understands when he makes a sound, he gets his toy.
Postpone the moment of turning around after a while, so the dog has to continue making his sound. If his first sound was a whine, he probably starts to bark, because he wants his toy very badly now. He is going to improve his effort to get what he wants.
If you are sure you can predict he is always going to bark if you turn your back with the toy in your hand, it is time to connect a command to the event. The command can be something like "loud", "speak", "bark" or something like that. It can be any command as long as it doesn’t look like a different command you already are using for the dog.
You use the command just before you turn your back to the dog. The order is: take the toy, command, turn around, dog barks, turn around again and the dog gets the toy. If you have done this several times, the dog will bark on command and you don't have to turn your back anymore. If the dog has the toy in his mouth, he off course is quit. So you can stop the barking by giving him the toy. Just before you throw the toy, you have to give the command for being quit. This can be something like "quit", "finish", "done" or "stop." As long as it doesn't look like another taught command. A dog respond to sounds and not to words. If a sound sounds like a different one, the dog will get confused.
If your dog understands this in-house, it is time to make it less easy. Try your garden, the park, at the street, so he get used to the different surroundings. In the learning phase, it is important to reward your dog every time he properly responds. But if the dog wants the toy badly, getting the toy is its own reward. An extra reward is not needed then.
If he understands the command properly, it is time to decrease the rewards. He doesn't get the toy always anymore, but only occasionally. The final results are that the dog responds to these commands the same way has he does to his other commands.
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