Dog Obedience Tips: Stop Barking

If you are looking for dog obedience tips that will help you to stop your dog barking so much, you have come to the right place. In this article we will look at how to keep your dog calm and quiet for more of the time.
Of course it is natural for dogs to bark just as it is natural for us to talk and sing and laugh. Therefore you cannot expect to prevent a dog from ever barking. It would be cruel not to allow dogs to express themselves sometimes. But there is a big difference between a dog that occasionally lets out a bark and one that barks loudly and incessantly, annoying you and your neighbors.

If you have an adult dog that has been encouraged to bark in the past, it will be very hard to stop it. For example you might have a rescue dog whose previous owners liked it to bark at visitors or guard the house. That kind of behavior is going to be very hard to change.
On the other hand, it should be possible to teach a young dog not to bark so much. In fact, the method that you can use is just like the method that you have probably seen in other dog obedience tips. Give a command such as ‘Quiet!’ and then reward the dog if it stops barking.
The problem with applying dog obedience tips like this to a problem of barking is that we often forget to reward the dog for good behavior. For example if a dog is quiet for an hour, you probably would not give it a treat just for not barking in that time. Even if you did, the dog would not understand what the reward was for. It is not like a child who can understand an explanation.
So at the same time as following our dog obedience tips by teaching the dog to respond to the command, you will need to think about why he is barking so much and what you can do to prevent this.
Many dogs bark when they are bored or lonely. Dogs like to be around people or other animals. If you are leaving a dog alone in the house or yard for long periods of time, he is likely to bark a lot.
The ideal solution to this would be to stay home with the dog, but of course this is probably not possible. Could you take him to work with you? If not, you might want to get another pet to keep him company. Sometimes, having a cat in the house will work well, but only if they do not chase each other around the house and wreck everything!
Another possibility could have somebody stop by and take the dog out for a while. You can often get a dog walking service to do this. If the dog gets plenty of exercise in the middle of the day while you are at work, he is likely to stay calm the rest of the day and not bark so much.
You can also use anti bark collars to help to teach your dog not to bark. These will give the dog an unwanted stimulus when he barks. In some cases it is a very mild electric shock. In other cases it might spray a scent that the dog does not particularly like, such as citronella.
Bark collars can be very effective because they will work when you are not around. In fact, one of these collars could be the only way that you can keep the neighbors from being annoyed by your dog when you are not home. So you may want to consider buying an anti bark collar to use along with our dog obedience tips.