Some Free Tips to Help a Santa Monica Jack Russell Stop Barking

By: David Codr

Published Date: January 23, 2020

Poppy - Some Free Tips to Help a Santa Monica Jack Russell Stop Barking

For this Santa Monica Dog Psychology session we shared tips to stop 3 year-old Jack Russell Terrier Poppy From Barking at sounds outside her home.

Knowing that Poppy had a habit of barking at strangers, I arranged to have her guardians meet me outside before we started this in home Santa Monica dog training session. If you have a dog that likes to bark, meeting outside can help the dog feel more relaxed and confident as they aren’t focused on only one thing.

I used some dog behaviorist tricks that helped tremendously, not only did the dog not bark at me at all, she was actually running up next to me with a nice spring in her step. All I did was use some positive reinforcement to create a pleasant experience and give her as much time and space as she needed. This helped her relax and feel comfortable and in control of the situation. This is the power of positive dog training.

Now I could also see that Poppy was an insecure dog and she showed signs of having cortisol in her blood. You can usually spot this in a dog by what we call efficiency of movement; snapping the head around and jumpy or jittery behavior. I spent a good portion of the session sharing tips that will help the humans assume the leadership role in her eyes so she can go “off guard dog duty” and relax. This is a key element in her canine rehabilitation plan.

One of the things that Poppy barks at are sounds outside the home. Actually the dog also barked at sounds inside the home, lol. I pulled out my phone and handed it to the guardians so I could show them an easy way to stop dog barking.

By creating a positive association with the sounds, going slow and using lots of positive reinforcement, I was able to quickly help Poppy stop barking at different sounds. It was amazing to see how quickly she responded, she stopped barking at things she normally would bark at like people talking outside the door, a neighbor dog walking in front of her or a stranger standing up.

Stopping dog barking in cases like this isn’t hard, it just takes time, practice and attention to not push too far too fast. And as you saw in the above free dog training video, anyone can do it. You don’t have to specialize as a professional Jack Russell dog trainer to do it.

I advised the guardians to practice this secret to stopping dog barking aas often as possible in short practice sessions and to make a list of all the things she barks at so they can systematically eliminate them one at a time. Id also like them to recreate the greeting I used to help her build a positive association to strangers, have at least on practice run at that each week so they can stop her anxiety and barking behavior for those situations too.

To help the guardians remember everything we covered in this dog psychology session, we filmed a roadmap to success video that you can check out below.

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This post was written by: David Codr