Curb Your Dog's Excess Barking

Dogs bark as a means of communication. There is no way to completely stop your dog from barking, but you can curb some of his barking behaviors and learn to have him quit when you give a command. Follow these simple tips and you will be able to stop excessive barking from your four-legged friend.

Learn what makes your dog bark. If the neighbor has a dog that constantly barks your dog is probably going to bark also. If when your neighbor leaves for work at 4 AM and makes a racket doing it, your dog will probably bark at him as well. So you see there are certain things that dogs just naturally bark about.

So the answers to the two problems above would include bringing your dog into the house so he's not outside barking with the neighbors dog. And make sure he's sleeping in the house and as far away as possible from the neighbor's driveway so that the neighbor doesn't wake him and get him to start barking in the morning.

Use a stop barking command. The command I used to get a dog to stop barking is "Enough". Now of course you can use any word you want because the dog doesn't understand what the word means. However to me "Enough" means I've had enough barking now stop.

After the enough command, there needs to be a consequence if the dog continues his barking. I use a water spray bottle for the consequence. Simply buy a small spray bottle with an adjustable nozzle so that it has a straight stream and fill with water. When your dog barks you give the enough command and then walk right up to the dog and spray twice right in his face. In fact the target is right between the eyes.

Usually it only takes three or four times of the enough command and the water in the face before the dog learns that when it hears enough it better stop barking. I have had a couple of clients asked me what if he gets water in its eyes. No problem it's only water.

You can never expect your dog to be completely silent, dogs bark by nature. Sometimes it's even nice to have a dog that will bark to tell you that somebody is here. However you can teach your dog that excess barking will not be allowed and make your dog a more enjoyable pet by using these simple tricks.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Curb-Your-Dogs-Excess-Barking&id=8347248