How to Teach Your Dog to Bark All Day – Part 1

This is the first post of a series; this week’s post will show you how to teach Fluffy to bark constantly while she’s outside by herself, and next week’s post will discuss how to get her to bark ferociously at your visitors or the FedEx guy.

Today’s how-to is all about how you can get your dog to bark incessantly, all day long!
Because who wants a dog who does something silly like wait quietly for you to come home?
With a dog who never shuts up, you’ll…

Never get any work done with all that distracting yapping going on.

Have to turn the the TV or radio up loud to drown out the noise.

Annoy the neighbors, who might even call animal control on you! Doesn’t that sound awesome?

And the best part is, it’s really easy to teach your dog to bark all day. Dogs seem to catch on to this really quickly. Follow these simple steps and your dog will be yammering away in no time.




Step one. Put your little loudmouth outside by herself for a couple hours. Don’t worry if you have a huge yard where she might be able to run around and exercise herself. Good news: most dogs will completely ignore all that space to play in, preferring to sit by the back door and wait for you – they don’t like to play by themselves. Go figure! But for our goal of creating a barker, this helps.

Step two. Once she gets bored hanging out by herself, she’ll start barking. Wait until she’s really loud and insistent, then stick your head out the door and tell her to knock it off. For best resullts, use a loud, annoyed-sounding tone. Dogs love it! Say something like, “it’s okay, Fluffy. Be quiet.” or the ever popular, “NO BARK!” Since most dogs generally don’t speak English or other human languages, they won’t understand the “no” part. They will assume your behavior and words roughly translates to “whenever you bark, I’ll come out and give you some attention.”

Dogs are clever that way; they know how to cut through our chatter and look at what we do to determine what we mean. Even without advanced degrees in Human Behavior. Geniuses!

Repeat this step a few times, once every 20-30 minutes should do the trick. You can vary things a bit by actually stepping outside and grabbing Fluffy by the scruff when you tell her to be quiet. Physical contact – always a good thing.

Step three. Time to kick it up a notch. Grab a toy, or some food that Fluffy likes. If you have a treat-dispensing toy like a Kong, even better. If you followed the previous two steps, Fluffy should be yapping her head off by now. Take your toy/treats, and step out the back door, pretending to be mad and/or exasperated. Tell your dog something like “if you’re quiet, I’ll give you this treat.” or, “this should shut you up for a while,” and dramatically toss the object to the dog.

The message you’re now sending Fluffy, is, of course, “barking really works! I’ll not only give you attention, but I’ll even give you goodies.” Bring on the positive reinforcement!

Step four. Eventually, Fluffy will get bored with the goodies you gave her and continue barking, since it’s worked so well for her previously. Now when she barks, it’s time to give up the charade of being frustrated and wanting her to hush. This is the most important step – don’t forget to do it. Wait till she’s really barking up a storm, then open the door and let her inside. This tells her, “okay, you’re right. I was just kidding about all the ‘no barking’ stuff. Please forgive me.”

A List of Don’ts
While training Fluffy to be a marathon barker, there are some things you don’t want to do. The following list is stuff that may actually instill in Fluffy the terrible habit of barking less and waiting quietly for you to open the door. You wouldn’t want that to happen.

Don’t: give her attention when she’s quiet. While you’re waiting for the right moment to deliver your rewards, like attention or treats, don’t wait until she stops barking. You don’t want her to learn that quiet = reward.

Don’t: give her lots of exercise. Whenever you plan on leaving her alone all day, make sure you don’t exercise/play with her beforehand. Exercise = tired dog = a quieter dog.

Don’t: allow her access to too many “mental stimulation” sources when she’s alone outdoors. As mentioned earler, lots of room to run around won’t harm anything, but something like a kiddie pool to play in or a sandbox with toys and treats buried inside might keep her too busy to bark.

Don’t: let her inside when she’s quiet. Since being allowed indoors is the ultimate reward, you must be very careful to use it appropriately. Bring her in only while she’s barking. If you wait until she’s stopped barking for a minute before letting her in, it’ll teach her that quiet = reward.

Good luck with your training, and tune in next Tuesday for Part Two: the Doorbell Barker.

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