Transcript

Lesson Transcript (if you prefer reading over watching a video):

"What if it was easy? Now I'm all about finding the easy solutions first and solving them, rather than making things complicated. But before we get to the easy solutions, we need to find out why our dog is barking, because different types of barking require different solutions. And some of them are easy and some of them are not.

Is our dog barking? Because they're frustrated. They're wanting something which is called demand barking. Uh, people walking past, are they barking worse when there's a dog walking past? Like my two. Um, is your dog barking at the birds fighting? I actually had my very first dog, Zak a Dobermann, used to bark at birds fighting.

Are they barking at noises? Visitors? Ah, now here's an interesting part about the visitors. Is it the knock on the door? Is it when the visitors drive up into your driveway? Is it the expectation of the people [00:01:00] coming in? Because we need to work on that. Is your dog barking in the car? Is your dog barking to be assertive, to chase something away, or is your dog barking to get something to come to them? Um, is your dog going forward and barking or is your dog backing up and barking? These are all different things that we need to know because they're slightly different solutions for each of these. Now some of them i'm not going to um, deal with in this program.

So if this is basically barking At home. If you are needing help with reactivity, I recommend you take one of my programs that help with reactive dogs. Um, but this is just basically barking at home, uh, so you don't annoy your neighbors. Now let's look at one easy solution that I came up with when I had my dog Kaz.

Uh, Kaz was a German Shepherd. And if anybody here [00:02:00] has got a German Shepherd, you know German Shepherds love the sound of their own voice, and they love to bark. So, Kaz Was a dog, we had a, like a, a metal gate, so there were gaps through in Kaz could see out. And when we'd go out, we'd leave her in the backyard.

So one day the lovely neighbor across the road told us, Hey, do you know that when you go out, your dog is sitting at the gate barking at everyone? So we sat down and had a little think, how can we. Stop this barking. We simply covered the gate in tarpaulin so Kaz couldn't see out and guess what? The barking stopped.

So you don't need to go through and find expensive solutions. Sometimes a simple solution works just fine. So, what could be some of the solutions you come up with? Could you put your dog in the backyard instead of the front yard? Um, or just like, uh, [00:03:00] create a barrier so your dog can't run all around the house and they're just in the backyard.

This could fix your problem so quickly and so easily. It doesn't need to be a very, uh, challenging thing. You could simply just get, um, some baby gates or a puppy playpen that you put up to, um, block off the backyard from the front yard. Doesn't, you don't need to put up a big expensive fence. Um, could you just close the curtains and blinds if your dog is looking out, um, the, um, window barking at everything walking past?

Or what about just telling your dog not to sit on the back of the couch and barking at everything going past? That's a simple solution, too. Um, now currently, my two, uh, we've moved from the country into town, and so my two are barking at everyone walking past. Now, you'll find out later in this course that every time your dog is barking, you actually need to deal with it because [00:04:00] not dealing with it is permission to bark.

So I've got the windows closed. My dogs are not looking out, barking at everyone and everything walking past now, or if you don't want to close the windows, could you create a visual barrier? So if you've got a smaller dog, simply putting. Um, a cardboard, or maybe you can get some of that corrugated plastic, um, that they use for the real estate signs.

Or you could get that from a stationary shop and you could put that in front of your window. Um, you could also put that on the back of your doors if your dog's scratching them. I actually had a client do that. And, um, so not just a little tip for you there. Um, could you just fix the gaps in the fence so your dog can't see the other dogs on the other side of the fence or the people?

Easy. Uh, or what about leaving the dogs inside the house or inside their crates or in a room when you go out instead of the backyard? [00:05:00] Simple solutions. So your mission, if you choose to accept it, is what simple solutions can you come up with? I've provided you a question below. What's your simple solutions?

And you could answer them below. I'm looking forward to reading the simple solutions you can come up with because not every barking problem needs a big fix. All right, enjoy."