Territorial barking can cause trouble for you and your neighbours. When your dog barks unendingly to protect “his” territory he doesn’t understand that it’s your territory. If you’re ok with your neighbour gardening in his backyard so should he. When we can show good and reliable leadership to our dog, he will learn to relax and trust us more.

Good leadership => Good behaviour

When a dog is overly protective of its “perceived territory”, it can lead to excessive barking at the front window or in backyards. Especially challenging are backyards with chain-link fences that back on to green spaces. Any view of people or people and their dogs walking by can trigger fits of territorial barking until the dog judges them to be sufficiently repelled.

We say “perceived territory’ because in the grand scheme of things, your property is YOUR territory. If you are alright with your neighbour having a family barbeque in the backyard or your neighbour puttering in her garden or people walking harmlessly past your house, your dog should be the same.

Ahhh, but you say “It is in a dog’s nature to be territorial.” This is where it becomes so important to understand that we, as humans, live in relatively close quarters. Sometimes so close that we have strangers walking down the hallway outside our door or even above or below us in a condo or apartment setting. Such territory shrinks significantly smaller compared to a house with a backyard.

As a result, it becomes important to understand that our dog can adapt to any circumstance according to our needs. This is where good leadership supplemented with proper training can help a dog feel as secure and non-territorial as you require. When you teach your dog that he can rely on your good leadership, he will understand that he is safe in all the places that you ask him to be, whether it’s in your backyard, at your front window, in your car or even in a crate.

Fence Barking leads to Furry Logic Intervention

There once were two Yorkshire terriers who could not be outside in the backyard without causing an uproar with all their barking. A few things were happening: 1. The dogs would go screaming out into the backyard barking to the neighbourhood that everyone best beware that they were on guard to protect their territory. 2. The neighbour’s cat was a freewheeling character who loved to lay on top of the 6-foot fence and look down with disdain upon the yapping dogs. The pint-sized canines couldn’t understand why the cat wasn’t affected by all their efforts so they kept on barking and jumping no matter what the owners did. 3. In their frenzy, as the tiny guardians of their fenced galaxy ran back and forth, barking and snarling uncontrollably, once in awhile they would bump into each other and in their worked-up state would attack each other. No one got seriously hurt so you needn’t worry. But you can imagine the noise that would attract the attention of the neighbours on all sides.

How we managed the frenzy

So, to manage territorial barking, it is extremely valuable to teach your dog that you control passage through any door. We call this exercise Door Control. When your dog exits any door he must show respect by waiting for permission from you. You can use body language by facing your dog and blocking the space of the open door and using a voice tone that your Furry Logic trainer will demo that has meaning for your pooch. Praise (positive feedback) when he looks up at you, which signifies he’s listening, and then release him by stepping aside. You’ll notice we don’t use “Sit” or “Stay”.

So when the two dogs learned to exit calmly through the door, (it took practice), without barking, they ignored their feline tormentor completely and scampered playfully onto the grass to have a pee and a sniff, maybe not in that order, like normal confident dogs who weren’t paranoid that their galaxy might be under alien invasion.

Window barking causes big problems for new mom

Recently, we got a call for problem barking at the front window. Ever walk by a house with a barking dog inside? Of course you have. Our clients hadn’t recognized a need to control their Cavalier King Charles who barked at people, dogs, squirrels, birds, etc., etc. Or at least they didn’t know that there was a way. But now it had become a necessity. Everytime when our new mom would sit down to nurse her baby, which was multiple times during the day, the dog would invariably run to the window and bark… at nothing. If you know anything about a Cavie bark it can be quite sharp and startling.

Our first assessment was that the dog was just attention-seeking. He was the first baby after all. Another explanation was that he understood that the lady of the house was indisposed so he had to step up and let the world know that he was on guard duty.

Regardless of the reason, this annoying behaviour had to stop. Our job was to first teach the owners how to correct the territorial barking at the window when they weren’t occupied by baby’s needs and secondly to train our subject to go take a nap in his crate on command when it was baby-feeding time. Wisely, the young parents had crate-trained their dog long before baby arrived so it was fairly easy to send him there at these “unusual” times of the day.

They were diligent with correcting the window barking, and other homework devised to ramp up their leadership. And eventually they dispensed with the crating at nursing time and moved him to his doggy bed away from the window. Naptime.

Are you challenged by your dog’s uncontrollable barking? We can alleviate his fear and territorial barking and bring you peace with some Furry Logic in Home training. Give us a call or send us an email. contact@furrylogic.ca.