Hello! We adopted our approximately 6 year old schnauzer mix a year and a half ago and he's grown into a super companion. He's now great with other dogs, walks loose leash and has a good grasp of commands. The only thing driving me crazy is the 'watch dog' barking. I can live with him barking at people walking by the house, but he's not a good greeter when people walk onto our property or into our house. He goes into full watch dog and barks aggressively (for several looong minutes) and on occasion will jump on people unexpectedly. He's not a big dog (25 lbs) but that's not a factor -- we need to find a way to stop this.
We'd like to take him camping, but who wants to camp next to a dog that will bark at the slightest threatening sound? Threatening in his mind, that is -- he's awoken us at night to save us from the refrigerator, which apparently made an aggressive 'thunk'. Good boy.
I tried giving him lots of tasty treats when people entered the house, or when he barked at people on the street. This seemed to turn into bark, bark -- where's my treat? -- bark, bark. Not quite the affect intended.
He's getting the idea of 'quite' and 'shh' more these days and will eventual stifle his bark to a softer woof, or five. But if he's in full on protection mode it'll take a few minutes to even hear us, it seems. And he has to get that last 'woof' in. No way I'm getting in that last word. Oh ya, he's stubborn. (Okay, that last willful 'woof' makes us chuckle on occasion -- quite the personality on this mutt!)
We've put in a front patio and want to invite the neighbours over to help us desensitize him. What do you think? Good idea or bad idea? How should we do this? Have them give him treats, or everyone ignore him?
Any other ideas? I'm at my wits end. As I mentioned, we want to take him camping (thinking of a multi-week holiday), but his barking just won't work -- I can just imagine him losing his little terrier mind every time a camper strolls by our site. Ya, not a good time. Help?
Submitted June 12, 2015 at 06:16PM by silvrlining http://ift.tt/1MOs40p Dogtraining
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