Training a Super Barking Dog the Silent or Quiet Command

For this Omaha dog training session we taught 1 year-old Labrahuhua Oliver the Quiet command and shared other tips to stop his demand barking.

Ive worked with a lot of barking dogs, but Oliver may take the cake. He displayed pretty much every kind of barking there is; demand barking, alert barking, barking to disagree … sometimes I think he was just barking to bark.

The secret to stopping a dog from barking is twofold. First you need to make sure the dog sees and respects you as an authority figure. The second is to communicate you want the dog to be quiet in a way the dog understands. Many people think shushing or yelling at a barking dog is the way to accomplish this. Its not. In fact it can often backfire. In some cases, the dog thinks “cool, now we are both barking.”

I spent the first half of the session showing the guardian how to flip the leader follower dynamic. A dog has to see and respect you as an authority figure if you want them to listen when you tell them to stop barking.

After sharing tips on how to introduce and enforce rules, add structure and reward positive behaviors, we were ready to teach the dog the quiet command. You can learn how to teach a dog to stop barking in the free dog training video below.

While practicing this exercise a few times a day (in one minute practice sessions) for a week or two (until the dog will bark and stop barking on command without the dog wanting to bark) will be required, flipping the leader follower dynamic is just as important.

To help the guardian remember all the positive dog training tips we covered in this in home dog training session, we recorded a roadmap to success video that you can check out below.