Great Tips to Stop Dogs From Barking and Mouthing

By: David Codr

Published Date: April 18, 2017

JC and - Great Tips to Stop Dogs From Barking and Mouthing

JC is a two-year-old Maltese who lives in Council Bluffs with one-year-old Jaxon. Their guardian set up a dog behavior training session to get them to stop barking, mouthing and pulling on pant legs.

I cracked up listening to the dogs bark from outside the door when I arrived for the session. Being little dogs, the pair of Maltese’s version of dog barking sounded more like a duck, lol.

As I mentioned in the above video, repeating a command over and over to a dog is problematic. When a dog wants another dog to do something, they don’t ask over and over. They ask once then escort the dog into doing it.

One of the things I want to make sure the guardian stops doing is repeating a command over and over. The more you say a command to a dog, the less the dog thinks you mean it. So repeating “no bark” over and over almost never stops a dog from barking.

To help the guardian communicate with the dogs more effectively, I shared some non verbal communication methods with their guardian. I call these escalating consequences and they are derived from how dogs and other animals communicate with one another. As a result, the dogs understand right away which is one of the reasons Im a big proponent of positive dog training.

In this case, JC usually got the barking party started, and then Jaxon picked things up and carried the song home. In order to get the dogs to listen, I knew I needed to show the guardian how to change the leader follower dynamic.

I suggested a number of rules and ways to enforce them. Its going to be important for the guardian to consistently enforce these rules within 3 seconds in order for the dogs to get the message.

Now JC and Jaxon aren’t going to roll over easily; they are going to challenge the guardian to see if they are serious about these new rules and boundaries. But if the guardians stay consistent, pet the dogs with a purpose, reward good behavior through positive reinforcement and passive training, it shouldn’t take long before they stop barking and listen to their family members right away.

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This post was written by: David Codr