Use Your Inside Voice
When we held group classes we rarely, and I mean almost never had a barking issue. There was always plenty of space between dogs, barriers (we used plastic airline crates so then people could have a table too), and even another room connected by a half door (for the owner to see in). And although the set up was great, I have to think that was only part of it.
The main trick in a group dog training class is to train the dog. The other part of the job many people don’t realize is to train the clients (the people) how to train their dog. Therefore one of the first things we would teach people to do was about barking. If they heard another dog bark in class, no matter what their dog was doing, they were to click and treat their dog, each and every time they heard a bark. What started to happen was the dogs in class actually learned to focus on their owners when another dog barked. Because when the dog heard a bark, a reinforcement would come from their owner, so they learned to pay attention to their owners. And sooner than later, the owner could train through hearing a barking dog.
We didn’t get a lot of practice though, because we also would instruct the client who had the barker. The owners of the barking dog were instructed to completely ignore the barking dog until he paid some kind of attention to them, and then completely try and engage him by easy cues (sit, paw, target, etc) and click and treat for working. The barker learned no rewards happened from his owners, nor the other clients, nor the other dogs. After testing out the barking a few times the dog would learn there was no reward. And with the lack of reinforcement, the barking behavior extinguished.
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8 Comments to “Use Your Inside Voice”
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