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You may think it is weird and inconvenient to always have to ask someone to hold on for a second while you put your dog in his crate, but it is a lot more inconvenient to interrupt someone in mid-sentence while you dash off to yell at your dog and pull him out of whatever mischief he has gotten himself into.

A. Owner sits down to work on computer.

B. Dog positions himself on his bed which is next to the computer.

C. Owner feeds dog little treats periodically (I sometimes keep a cup of kibble on my desk for this purpose) or praises/pats dog periodically, or gives dog a chew item so that both owner and dog have a nice project to work on at the same time.

Success! Now you can get some work done.

It is darn hard to train your dog while you are in the shower, so management is the key in that case:

A. Owner is going to take a shower.

B. Owner puts dog in crate where he will not get into mischief.

C. Owner takes a relaxing shower and knows that his couch will still be in one piece when he gets finished.

Can you see how, like running water, you will be shaping your dog to be calm around the house? Between training reinforcing calm behaviors, training alternate behaviors, and managing when you can’t train, you would be surprised at how effectively even the wildest dog can be transformed into a model citizen around the house. As you can see, it does not take any more effort to do things this way than the way you are doing them now, but it does take a little thought and planning. Although it may seem difficult at first, predicting your dog’s behavior around the house and meeting it with appropriate action (reinforce, train, or manage) will become second nature and you will not have to think about it.

But, This is My Job!

Barking

Ahh, barking. People hate it so much, and many Pigs Fly dogs bark a lot. Why does your dog bark so much? Probably because he was bred to.

Smaller terriers were used to go down holes after small game. They were selectively bred to bark loudly and a lot once they found their quarry. Their lives depended on it. The purpose of the barking was so that they could be located, even many feet underground and dug out if necessary. A dog that did not bark might find himself stuck underground without any hope of rescue. As you can imagine, the gene pool for small terriers favors barking—a dog that won’t bark underground may not be around to reproduce much. Not only does the gene pool favor barking, but also barking at very low arousal threshold. Something as small as swirling leaves outside can raise a ruckus when small terriers are around.

Many hounds also have a low threshold of barking arousal. Barking or baying is the way that the hounds in a pack communicate to each other about who is on the trail and who is not, who is actively scenting and who is not, and the location of the quarry. The sound a pack of hounds makes is almost deafening.

My point in telling you this is that there is nothing wrong with your dog if he barks a lot. Many wild canids do not bark at all, and the ones that do bark, don’t bark nearly as much as domestic dogs do. We bred barking into our dogs because it was useful to us. Now that we live in townhouses, we don’t like it. You can train your dog to bark less, but let’s understand that, from your dog’s point of view, he is making a valuable contribution to the household when he barks. We bred that into him.

Only you can decide when and how much barking is acceptable to you. It is a fact that a barking dog is one of the best crime deterrents there is. When the barking crosses the line to public nuisance, you need to change the situation. Think about where and when you want your dog to bark, and where and when you do not want him to bark, and make an ABC plan based on that. I will give you a common barking scenario that is annoying to everyone.

A. Owner on phone or computer, engrossed and ignoring dog. Dog standing next to owner.

B. Within 30 seconds, dog barks.

C. Owner shushes the dog and/or tries to punish the dog.

Yup. You