How to stop your dog from barking at the door!

Gigi is an indoor only dog and a big time barker when someone knocks on the door, rings the bell or just walks by the house. I've tried everything from telling her "NO BARKING" to giving her a squirt of water with a spray bottle to shaking a can of pennies with no success at getting her to stop.

So I went on youtube to see if there was a video that would help me with this problem, and I found one that seemed very logical.





I tried this method out on Gigi yesterday. When I knocked on the door the first couple of times, as usual, she was her crazy, barking self. But after a few more times of realizing that she'd get a treat if she stayed quite, she started to simmer down a bit. Well, simmer down for her means a low growl. But it's a start. I'm going to work with her on this each day for 5-10 minutes, but I think I finally found a method that will get her to stay "reasonably" calm when someone comes to the door. Yay!

That's a great video. We have a good trainer in the area that helps with this. However, it's very expensive to take your dog there. That's why I love YouTube. There's great tutorials teaching you how to do these things. Very cool.

That's a very interesting technique. I think the key there is the graduated exercise. Takes a lot of patience to get that right, though. The trick is to go at the pace of your dog's learning capacity. Too many people fail to train their dogs simply because they try to force their dogs to learn at the pace set by the owner. Which doesn't work most of the time.

We invested in a bark collar that really helped tremendously. We have now trained my dog, who used to bark and anything and everything to only bark just to alert us that someone is at the door or there is a stranger that we do not want at the house. She may bark once when she hears a knock, but after the first knock, we will tell her to be quiet once and she will stop barking. The bark collar really trained her in about a week. It was amazing!

We have a method with Misha that seems to be working pretty well. First, we started with the shaker can which she is terrified of. This helps to break the barking cycle.

Now that I'm able to get to the door I use Cesar Milan's method of claiming the space with my own touches thrown in. When she starts barking, I immediately walk in between her and the door and I say "Thank you" in a firm voice. I walk her back from the door repeating "Thank you, you told us...No bark" at the same time I am pointing to the hallway. It's taken several weeks, but it's really paying off now. I can walk her back to the hallway or the living room. Then, I put her in a stay. It's helped us because it reaffirms that I'm in charge (we've had some issues in the past). Some times she responds to the "Thank You" even if I'm not in the room.

It has it's flaws. It works well for getting the mail or packages from UPS. Not great with someone actually standing at the door. The only thing that works at that point is putting the leash on her. But, in that case it's no so much the barking that is the problem, but the fact that she wants to tear them to pieces.

Good luck with your new method! I hope it works out and you have some quiet again.

Interesting video there. My dog doesn't bark so much at the door, but she barks at certain people who come to help us. There is this lady who comes in to iron our clothes and for some reason my dgo has taken a dislike to her. She barks her head off when she sees her. I should try this technique on her with that lady's cooperation. This is only person choco will even bark at.. it is kind of weird and I do not understand why she does this with this woman.

The video was a good idea, I would say that would be a good method to look into. I'd have to disagree with the poster who used a shock collar though, those are just cruel. Even if it's not a very bad shock, I think it's a mean thing to do to something you love and you're supposed to take care of.

I think the big difference is the philosophy of the training...the video uses positive training, while the shock collar uses negative training. Dogs always respond better to positive training, in my experience.