An Easy Way to Train a Dog to Be Quiet

For this in-home Omaha Dog training session I share the secret of how to train a dog to be quiet to teach Kingston, Anna and Wilbur’s (Left to right) parents how to stop dog barking.

I was originally called to address a few fights between Wilbur and Anna since they adopted their Bassett Hound. But after chatting with the guardians about the fights and dogs day today routine, I found that there was some confusion going on.

In our first session I went over a number of dog training fundamentals. I find that many dog behavior problems are a result of miscommunication or things of the humans do that inadvertently contribute to the dog Problems.

I went over the importance of using a marker word, showed the guardians how to introduce a command cue by introducing a hand targeting exercise as well as how to fade the lure later on.

Anytime I have a client whose dogs are having confrontations, I make sure to go over dog body language, cut off signals and sign signs of consent. Once people know how to better read their dogs, it’s much easier for them to interrupt or stop a Dog fight from starting in the first place.

Sometimes all it takes is to recognize a look, then use a lure or treat to guide the dog away from a potential conflict.

When I returned for the second session, the guardians mentioned that they hadn’t had any dog fights since they started watching the dog’s body language and interrupting or redirecting them. Love it when people learn about dog communiation and body language and use that info.

However, there was one problem that was continuing, the dogs like to bark, especially Anna. I’ve had a number of clients contact me with a dog barking problem over the years.

How to Train a Dog to Be Quiet

I made sure to explain that there are a number of reasons that dogs feel the need to bark. We tend to lump barks altogether, but just like yelling in humans, dogs bark for multiple reasons.

If your dog barking problem comes from an emotional response, it’s important to change how the dog feels about the thing they are barking at rather than simply work to train a dog to be quiet. After all, if you were yelling because you were scared or trying to warn someone and their response was to be quiet, you wouldn’t.

There is an easy way to train a dog to be quiet, but in order to be successful, the dog has to agree. This works if your dog is barking to ask for something, but not if the dog is feeling overwhelmed or fearful.

In Anna’s case she was doing what we call alert barking. This is to make sure that everyone knows that something is going on. For this type of dog barking problem it’s OK to teach a dog the quiet cue.

I have found the easiest way to train a dog to be quiet as to first teach it to bark on cue. In order to do this, you need to be able to get the dog to bark on demand.

I pulled out my camera and handed it to the guardians so that I could show them an easy way to train a dog to be quiet using this technique. If you have a dog barking problem that like this, you should definitely check out the free positive dog training video below for tips.

It will be important for the guardians to focus on the first part of the lesson completely before they work on introducing the quiet queue.

It may seem ironic that you need to teach a dog to bark before you train a dog to be quiet, ut putting things in context is a very powerful Dog training technique.

It will take some practice and a couple of days or even weeks in order to train a dog to be quiet in this situation. But if the guardians are consistent and redirect XXX after they are able to stop the barking, they should be able to use this exercise to put it into their dog barking problem.

How to Train a Dog to be Quiet for Emotional Barking

But I also wanted to show the guardians how they could stop a dog barking problem that comes from an emotional response as well.

This technique should be used for situations where the dogs are feeling uncomfortable or scared or caught off guard by the sound that makes them park. This technique uses the concepts of desensitization as well as counter conditioning.

If you’re dog barking problem comes from an emotional response, this is the technique that you should use.