Understanding Your Barking Dog
The most likely reason that you are having having barking dog issues is that your pet has stored up a lot of excessive energy which it needs to get rid of, in this case by jumping about and making lots of noise.
You will find that this happens more in the mornings and a good solution for dog barking is to get up a little earlier and take you pet for a longer walk. In addition, if your dog is left alone for long periods it is probably just getting lonely and the barking is just a sign of boredom.
Barking is not necessarily a bad thing, in some cases you want your dog to be as loud as possible, such as if you have a suspected burglar in the house. In most cases your dog is just trying to talk to you, perhaps he is just happy about something.
The problem is that the language barrier between barking dogs and humans is well nigh impenetrable. Therefore, you are forced to resort to the facts of the situation in which your dog is barking and try to understand from its body language just what it is trying to say.
Apart from that many people ask just why do dogs bark? This is a very difficult question as dogs appear to bark for many different reasons.
Naturally they will bark when they are happy about something such as greeting you on your return or perhaps they are happy about running around in the park.
Some dogs having barking bred into to them such as toy dogs or sporting breeds where they are trained to bark in order to notify their owners of the presence of a particular quarry being hunted. Other dogs like the guarding breeds are trained only to bark when a threat is perceived.
Other than the above common reasons for dog barking might include, boredom, hunger, being lonely, something is wrong, the presence of other animals or perhaps she just needs the toilet.
Again the context of the situation will help you to decide the likely cause. But of course it is not fair for you to try to shut the dog up. She may be communicating for a very good reason, you just need to spend some effort in understanding her.
However, dogs are not stupid animals there are situations where they realise that they can use their bark to annoy or force their owner into a particular action. It is at these times that you must show your dog that you are the boss and will not relent to what is effectively bullying.
For instance you dog may have decided that it is time to play and continues barking until you give in and drop what you are doing to amuse her. The problem here is that the dog then learns that all she has to do is to bark whenever she wants something and you will oblige.
This can get very wearing after a quite short period of time. The best approach would have been to show the dog that it cannot get its own way by giving it the cold shoulder.
What you need to do is to ignore your dog, but in an active way. Turn your back, make it obvious that by barking it will achieve not but your displeasure.
Repeated exercises like this will drum into your dog that you play when you want to play and walks are according to your timetable, not your dog's.