Understanding Why Your Dog Barks

To truly stop a dog from excessive yelping, howling, or barking you need to know what to attribute their behavior to. Excessive dog barking can be caused by separation anxiety, a lack of dog training, or it could just be a form of alarm barking. Dogs bark for different reasons, so while some techniques are helpful for all dogs who bark excessively, it’s helpful to understand what’s causing the behavior. In some cases, dogs haven’t received effective training to stop compulsive barking so they keep repeating the same behavioral patterns. Once you’re able to tackle the underlying cause of the excessive barks you can use the correct approach to prevent unwanted excitement.

Ways to Stop Dogs from Barking

Ignore the Dog Until They Stop Barking

Sometimes dogs find they’re rewarded, even when they won’t stop attention-seeking barking. Dogs bark, jump, or demand attention from people around them and often in return get some form of attention. When your dog is excited and won’t stop barking, avoid trying to calm them down by giving them attention. To change this frustrating dog behavior one method is to ignore the dog’s barks. After they have calmed down you can find a way to reward their calm behavior without exciting them once again. To stop your dog from excessive barking, keep rewarding their good behavior instead of giving them attention when they are barking too much.

Using Dog Commands to End Excessive Barking

Utilizing commands to stop excessive dog bark is a great tool when implemented correctly. When your dog stops barking after using your command, calmly reinforce this positive behavior with some form of calm affection and a treat. Basic dog training should teach dogs to stop barking with the use of verbal commands. After sticking with this dog training method your dog should start to listen to your command and stop barking even without a reward.

Maintain Control of the Environment Around Your Dog

Sometimes a dog barks at movement they see out of windows or fences. A dog may not stop excessive barking when they see cars driving by, or other dogs out for walks. As a way to curb their unhealthy behavior use sight barriers to keep them calm. Adding blinds, curtains, or a fence can help keep your dogs from barking nonstop. Controlling the environment around your dog will help them maintain their dog training and stop them from excessive yelping and barking while they continue to learn good behavior.

Dog Socialization

When dogs aren’t socialized properly they don’t have the experience of how to act around other animals, people, children, and unfamiliar environments. Starting slow under a controlled environment and then increasing the amount of socializing can help increase the dog’s confidence. All of this will teach them to not overreact to external stimuli.

Provide Enough Exercise for Your Dog

Many dog breeds require a fair amount of daily exercise to expel excessive energy. A dog that isn’t receiving enough exercise may have pent-up energy which causes them to bark. Dogs may become anxious without exercise and have trouble controlling their burst of energy, including barking.

Remove Your Dog from a Stressful Area

Helping your dog to stay calm is important if you want them on their best behavior. Any creature may act out or become emotional under excessive stress. By understanding what triggers your dog’s anxiety and causes them to bark, you can avoid those environments or situations until they’re more confident and have learned to manage their outbursts.

Helping Your Dog’s Communicate

Sometimes because they’re in need of something and are trying to communicate their needs to you. If your dog is trying to let you know they need to go outside to relieve themself try implementing a new way for them to communicate. Give them a bell to ring as a way to notify you what they need, and then provide them with positive reinforcement when they use it.

Attention Dog Training

Teaching your dog to give you their attention when you ask for it can be an essential part in their training. By teaching your dog to pivot their attention to you it gives you the opportunity to interrupt their negative behavior. By rewarding them for looking at you and providing a command word each time you create a positive association with turning their attention towards you.

Practice Intercepting Your Dog’s Attention Before They Start Barking

By controlling what your dog gives their attention you can help them to stay more calm and not focus on something that would cause them to bark. Showing them affection, eye contact, or providing treats to keep their attention in a stressful environment helps them to build up confidence in situations that may otherwise lead to barking. By keeping them from giving up in stressful situations help them to have stronger willpower when the next stressful event occurs around them.

Dogs & Separation Anxiety

In situations where dogs have separation anxiety, they may be barking because they are anxious for their owner to leave them. Frustrated dog owners shouldn’t get frustrated at dogs in these situations because the dog isn’t intending to misbehave, it’s just scared. Essentially fixing separation anxiety is done by training your dog to understand that you will come back after you leave. Begin by crate training and leaving the room, and then continue to lengthen the time you’re leaving them alone.

Professional Dog Trainers: Stop Excessive Barks

Marcum K9 Obedience is a leader in dog training in Central Ohio. We offer a wide selection of training programs that are customized to fit the needs of you and your dog. We address aggression, housebreaking, low confidence, and both basic training and advanced obedience.

Our Dog Training Process:

Schedule a Visit

Meet with our trainers during a consultation visit will help your dog get more familiar with them and give our team a better understanding of what types of training your dog needs

Unique Training Programs

Because every dog has unique needs we can create a training program that works to specifically help transform them. With custom programs, we have a higher success rate for training.

Multi-option Training

We offer private training, board & train, and group training as different options. All of these are great ways to introduce your dog into a training scenario, all at different levels of intensity.

Graduation & beyond

Your dog will graduate from our training program with a new attitude. Afterward, we can provide materials and tips on how to maintain their training.