An Easy Way to Help a Dog Barking at Strangers

For this West LA Dog training session I worked with 5 year-old Bulldog Opal and 3 year-old Heeler mix Frankie; sharing tips to teach a dog to stop barking at strangers.

We started off the dog training session by going over a number of fundamentals. We introduced and loaded a marker word, then went through hand targeting so that the humans could practice their timing.  Next I went over the importance of celebrating desired behaviors, how to teach dog manners, some creative exercise tips as well as how to incorporate rules and structure to help the dogs practice impulse control.

Practicing impulse control is super important if you have a dog with a barking problem. Dogs need to practice any skill we want them to have and impulse control is something that most people neglect.

Tips to Stop Dog Barking at Strangers

Most of my clients with dog barking problems all contribute to the issue by verbally chastising their dog or telling them to stop barking. While this makes complete sense to humans, it confuses the heck out of dogs because for dogs, all attention is rewarding.

In this case, Frankie barks when people approach his home. Sometimes Frankie barks when he sees people approaching the door but he also barks at the window when he hears people walking by outside.

The dog doesn’t realize that the person is passing by their house no matter what. In their mind, that person was coming to invade your house because they barked, they made the person go away. Over time, this causes the dog to bark at the window when they hear sounds. A great way to reinforce dog barking problems.

Each time you tell your dog to stop barking or shush them, you are giving them attention. Over time, this conditions dogs to bark more.

Dog training is simply a matter of reinforcing the dog after it does a behavior. This happens for things you want the dog to do but it also happens for things you don’t want the dog to do. Giving attention for unwanted behavior is probably the most common mistake dog owners.

A better way to stop barking is how the dog perceives the thing or situation that is causing the barking in the first place. I like to use accommodation of desensitization and counterconditioning to stop dog barking.

If you have a barking dog problem, you should definitely check out the free positive dog training video below.

Frankie’s situation is going to be a little bit unique due to the layout of his home. In order to shoot the video we had to do it outside but the humans can use the same approach in any location.

The key thing is to have enough distance so that the dog doesn’t feel the need to bark. In the video, you can see that the person only walked partially towards us before stopping and turning around.

The premise of this tip to stop dog barking is to expose the dog to the stimulus in a low enough level intensity so they don’t bark, then give them something positive afterwards. We can help ensure the dog doesn’t bark by making sure there is enough distance between it and whatever is causing the barking.

It’s a process and there will be good days and bad days, but if the guardians practice this secret to stopping dog barking a couple of times a week and follow the other tips that we shared in this session, they should notice the barking less often.

After we shout the video on how to stop dog barking, I made sure to give Opal a lot of attention and quite a few treats. She’s a lovely girl but because she doesn’t have a lot of behavior problems, I didn’t get an opportunity to work with her. I snuck her a few additional treats before we wrapped up the session.

To help the guardians remember all of the tips we shared in this in-home West LA Dogs training session, I pulled out my phone to record a roadmap to success summary video.