My wife has a Yorkshire terrier. He’s a year and a half old and is called Monty. We got him as a puppy last year and he was never really a barker, which was good as Yorkies can be a bit yappy.
However, just a few months ago things changed – if he heard any noise outside, he started barking. Our house is in a very quiet residential area – so any external traffic is usually audible. Certainly, it’s not all bad. If an intruder tries to enter your property for example, then a little advance warning is a good thing. Unfortunately, Monty kept on barking for quite some time after the “threat” disappeared. It got annoying pretty quickly.
Luckily for us, one of my wife’s friends had encountered a similar problem with her own dog and was able to advise how she had remedied her problem. Acting upon her advice, my wife decided to treat the problem before we all went insane – or Monty met with an premature end. What she did was to get a bottle of mineral water – one of those ones with the “sports” type cap. Whenever Monty started barking at some external threat, real or imagined, she splashed a small amount of water on him, said that he was naughty and shook the bottle in his face. She didn’t shout at him. He was disciplined firmly but quietly.
As it transpired, she only had to actually splash him two or three times at most. After that all she did was to shake the bottle at him and squeeze it so that it produced a crinkling sound. That was good enough for Monty. It took only three days to produce a noticable reduction in his barking. After training Monty for a week in this manner the barking problem was fully resolved.
The added bonus was that Monty’s therapy was not only extremely effective, but also selective. External noises no longer trigger a prolonged barking session – but if anyone comes to the front door, or the doorbell rings, he still barks. I’m quite confident that my wife could eliminate this barking if she wanted, by using precisely the same technique – but we don’t mind it, especially bearing in mind that he doesn’t keep up the barking after the initial stimulus has been investigated.
So, if your dog is a problem barker, you might want to try the water bottle treatment. It’s humane and it seems to be fast acting and effective. There are other ways to stop your dog barking of course, but this one is well worth a try in the first instance.
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