Training a Cockapoo to Stop Dog Barking at People Passing By Her House

For this Omaha dog behavior training session we worked with a one year Cockapoo named Luna, training her to stop barking at people who pass by her home.

Tips to stop dogs from barking at people

Before we introduced the exercise to stop dog barking, we discussed Luna‘s day-to-day life. Often times dogs bark at people out of boredom. Getting Luna some exercise in short sessions multiple times throughout the day, alternating with mental stimulation, can go a long way.

I also recommended that the guardians try to avoid having a Luna in the front of the house or yard when people are most likely to be passing by. This is called management and while it won’t fix the dog barking problem, it will prevent it from getting worse. Exercising her 10 mnutes before practiceing the positive dog training exercise below or times when lots of people will pass by the house is also a wise strategy.

To stop a dog from barking at people, you want to create a positive association or make sure that the dog feels comfortable and relaxed during the encounter. I pulled out my camera and handed it to one of the families children so that he could fill me sharing this tip to stop dogs from barking at people.

The engage disengage game is a wonderful way to stop dogs from barking at people passing by their home. As you can see in the video, it’s not a hard exercise to do, even if you’re not a professional cockapoo dog trainer.

Homework to Stop Dog Barking

I’d like to see the guardians practicing this secret stopping dog barking once a day for 2 to 3 minutes, every day for the next two weeks. If the guardians are managing the distance between Luna and the people passing by and have good timing for delivering the marker word and the treat, it shouldn’t take long before she starts to see people walking by her home as a positive instead of something to bark at.

We covered a number of other tips in this in-home dog training session. To help the guardians remember them all, I created a separate write up that includes the roadmap to success video that you can check out with this link.