Tips to Stop a Dog From Fence Fighting with the Neighbor’s Barky Dogs

By: Becca Crowley

Published Date: March 12, 2020

Rufus scaled - Tips to Stop a Dog From Fence Fighting with the Neighbor's Barky Dogs

For this Omaha dog training session we shared tips to stop a dog from fence fighting with neighbor dogs who bark at the fence to help 4 year-old Mastiff mix Rufus stop reacting.

When you have a dog that fence fights (barking and charging the fence when another dog is on the other side), I always like to see if there are contributing factors. In this case, Rufus’s guardian’s neighbors leaving their dogs out for extended periods of time unspuervised combined with an unusual work schedule and needing more exercise were likely influencing these behaviors.

After sharing tips on easy and creative ways to exercise a dog, we discussed how to introduce rules, add some structure and the importance of rewarding desired behaviors. These are great ways for humans to show a dog they have things under control which helps many dogs stop acting reactive to other dogs.

I also showed the guardian how to enforce an invisible boundary using dog body language. The more she helps the dog practice staying behind an invisible line, the more practice he will have at self restraint. This is a key behavior to practice if you want to stop a dog from fence fighting.

While increasing exercise is something the guardian can control, the neighbors dogs are not. We headed out into the back yard multiple times to do some attention games, but had to keep coming back inside when the neighbors dogs alternated coming out and starting a barage of barking at the fence.

After several attempts, we were able to go outside without the neighbors dogs joing us for their constant barking, allowing me to share some tips to help prevent fence fighting with other dogs. I started out with some basic training, using a clicker to practice the dog moving away from the fence with no other dog there.

When the neighbor dog came out you got to see a little bit of Rufus’s reactive behavior. When a dog is in the middle of fence fighting, it can be intense and often the dog will not listen if you try to call it. That is why its so important to practice the come command or calling the dog away from the fence without the other dog there. You have to practice this tip to stop fence fighting a lot without any dogs to get a dog to come when there is a dog present.

There were other tips that will help the dog learn to not fence fight such as adding a barrier, exercising before it goes outside and using a long lead. The guardian will need to use a few, if not all of these to stop Rufus’s unwanted fence fighting behavior.

To help the guardian remember all the dog psychology tips we shared in this in home Omaha dog training session, we shot a summary, roadmap to success video.

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This post was written by: Becca Crowley