BARKING, Driving Me CRAZY

Beanwood

Beanwood

Administrator
This is our "knock on wood" cue in action...:)

Stage one...we taught go to bed. This was taught very early with Benson and Bramble, so to generalise "knock on door" also meaning go to bed was fairly easy for them to grasp. Even so, we worked on the "Go to bed cue" with Casper, using the puppy Kikopup videos, with high reinforcement rates.

Stage 2. Then cue'ed go to bed from the living room door (just Casper on his own.)

Stage 3. Adding "new cue with old cue" so "go to bed" with a very light tap on the living room door....if Casper just moved in the direction of his bed he was rewarded for this. We made this a fun game, lots of treats! :)

Stage 4. Fading out "go to bed" and using a light tap on door... then very slowly increasing the volume of the the knock.

Stage 5. Moving the tap on the door from the living room door to the outside door, but dialling back criteria, so if Casper heard the tap, and ran towards his bed, that was enough to get a reward!

Still not quite there, but at least if a delivery man arrives, all dogs dive into the front room where I have a box of high value treats stashed. :)

 
Charlie

Charlie

Location
Argyll & Bute, Scotland
Like it! xx

I think I may have the answer! We went to Scotland for a long weekend to stay in our new home, I know mad at 417 miles each way :rolleyes: We are very remote there, only one car passed in 3 days, met our neighbour all good just one bark. So there will be so few triggers we shouldn't have a problem. In fact Charlie was remarkably chilled out so that's the cure :LOL:Just need to move now! ;) xx
 
Anne123

Anne123

Location
Vlaardingen, the Netherlands
Charlie said:
Like it! xx

I think I may have the answer! We went to Scotland for a long weekend to stay in our new home, I know mad at 417 miles each way :rolleyes: We are very remote there, only one car passed in 3 days, met our neighbour all good just one bark. So there will be so few triggers we shouldn't have a problem. In fact Charlie was remarkably chilled out so that's the cure :LOL:Just need to move now! ;) xx
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Finn is in our wood house more relaxed then in our house in town. He barks a lot in town, when the doorbell rings, when someone knocks at the window. Also when I go and walk Finn it is no fun. He is very allert to see if there are cats, birds etc that needs to be chased away. Or other dogs. He barks at every dog he sees. That is when my oh walks him.....He knows when I walk him that it isn’t allowed to bark. But he stays on high allert. Not so in the woods...
 
Charlie

Charlie

Location
Argyll & Bute, Scotland
Jacqui-S said:
Wow!
when are you officially moving in Helen?
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Now there's a question! We didn't want to come home but still things to sort out here. We are thinking Easter 2019 maybe before, we'll see. We are going back with a van load of furniture in a few weeks but this time Grace and her friend are looking after Hattie & Charlie. We feel so at home in Scotland, it's truly beautiful xxx
 
Charlie

Charlie

Location
Argyll & Bute, Scotland
An update. We are in Scotland for a few weeks so I have been working on Charlie's alert barking. Our neighbour over the way has the electricity board round cutting trees away from the power lines. Charlie heard them went to the window and barked, I threw treats on the floor not saying anything, he came away, repeated a few more times. After a few minutes he looked at the workmen NO BARKING, looked at me for thrown treats. Then he went downstairs started barking at the men again, I yelled "scatter" he stopped barking flew up the stairs for more thrown treats. He is now sitting at the window happily watching the men go about their work and NO barking. It's worked, well so far!! So chuffed xxx :fingers:
 
snowbunny

snowbunny

Location
Andorra and Spain
Great progress!

I've been charting our progress (because data!!), and it's great to see a downward trend. We have some days better than others, largely down to how noisy people are being in the apartment block corridor - actually, on consistently noisy days, they tend to cope better than on quiet days when there is a sudden dog barking in the corridor or similar. But we're working on it, and look! We're getting there :)

Screenshot 2019-01-09 at 17.43.20.png

Top chart is the total number of noises in a day (Orange = Ginny, Purple = Luna, Red = Willow, Blue = Shadow, Green = Total) and the bottom chart is the count of each intensity (Aqua = gruff or whine, barely audible, Blue = 1-3 barks, Yellow = more barking, less than a minute in duration, Orange = more than a minute in duration). I also note the trigger for each noise, but I haven't charted that :)
 
HAH

HAH

Moderator
Location
Devon, UK
snowbunny said:
Great progress!

I've been charting our progress (because data!!), and it's great to see a downward trend. We have some days better than others, largely down to how noisy people are being in the apartment block corridor - actually, on consistently noisy days, they tend to cope better than on quiet days when there is a sudden dog barking in the corridor or similar. But we're working on it, and look! We're getting there :)

View attachment 4186

Top chart is the total number of noises in a day (Orange = Ginny, Purple = Luna, Red = Willow, Blue = Shadow, Green = Total) and the bottom chart is the count of each intensity (Aqua = gruff or whine, barely audible, Blue = 1-3 barks, Yellow = more barking, less than a minute in duration, Orange = more than a minute in duration). I also note the trigger for each noise, but I haven't charted that :)
Click to expand...
This is brilliant, what a useful piece of work - and look at little Ginny goody three shoes, not a peep. Fascinating where they interact too - if you did overlay the trigger you’d have a good sense of patterns in types of noise for each dog (altho obvs you know that anyway, but just because you can, eh?) - and then over the course of a year’s data you can animate the charts and create an art installation titled “Progress”. Frazzled brain alert... :)
 
snowbunny

snowbunny

Location
Andorra and Spain
99% of the triggers are noises in the hallway. We have the occasional cat walking across our terrace, the odd FOMO bark from Squidge or resource guarding from Willow, but they are nearly entirely people calling, dogs barking, or other unfamiliar noises in the block.
 
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