| Re: Fear barking?
You definately need to find some way of stopping the barking and there are several good suggestions here. The only way you will really get him to not bark at things he's afraid of is to get him used to the fact that these things are nothing to fear, it's just part of "socialising" be it people, dogs, noises etc, the less he's afraid of the less fear barking...
rubyhunz... she may be "just guarding her territory" but she shouldn't really do that when someone is just passing by, so you should try to stop that now, and only allow one or 2 barks as a warning when someone is stepping onto YOUR territory. Be aware that if she really feels the need at her age to be guarding YOUR territory then she probably feels she needs to protect you and is therefore thinking she is "alpha" sice that would be the "pack leaders" job. With your posts elsewhere about her dominant nature I would be very wary of this and make sure you get it under control now before you have bigger problems in the future.
Stale... you shouldn't need to teach Ozzy to bark, I'm sure he will do it when the need arises, I bet he knows it's your friends on the porch and he's already ok with them, get someone he hasn't met to do it I bet it's a different story. Zakk will sometimes bark when a stranger comes to the door but for people he has been introduced to he sits there waiting to say hello.
Having said that we have just started to teach Zakk to "speak" on command in class so that we can get him to bark when we want him to (and hopefully not to bark when we don't want him to)  |