Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 11:24 am Post subject: How do I teach 'speak' and 'quiet'?
Lionel is quite a big barker, but generally only when someone rings the doorbell. Now this is obviously fair enough because he is going into 'I'm protecting my home' mode....however, once I have opened the door and he can see who it is he continues to bark like a loon at them even if I tell him its ok and to stop.
His tail is wagging the entire time he is barking but still, to some people, this is probably quite daunting (its a big old bark!). Some people have said they dont mind as they can see from the tail wagging that he is just being noisy, but I have to explain to others that he really is soft as anything whilst they skuttle back down the driveway
I am after some tips on getting him to 'speak' and then 'be quiet' on command. I dont mind him barking when the doorbell rings, but want to be able to tell him to stop once the door is opened and we know who it is.
OO I should also add that our back garden goes round to the side of our house too and we have gates up across the driveway...if Lionel goes in the garden by himself he immediately goes straight to the gates and barks (even at night which is obviously not good for our neighbours!) so we have to get him to come straight back in again. When we look he appears to be barking at nothing/no-one!
We are in the process of putting up fencing in our garden that will stop him going round onto the driveway. But we would love to have a command to get him to stop barking so he can continue to mooch round the garden instead of having to come straight back in again.
Well the problem I had with Toby was getting him to bark at all...lol! But to teach him to speak I waited until he barked at something and told him 'speak' and then did it every time I heard him bark. Then I started trying cueing it when he wasn't barking - he picked it up very quickly. Maybe you could try the kind of approach when Lionel barks at the doorbell so he understands the word?
The 'shush' is more difficult really....takes more work. I haven't needed to employ it much with Toby (yet...) but with our old Westie (who used to bark at the door...or anything that moved...lol) we taught him 'quiet' by using that word and rewarding him when he stopped barking and then started trying it when he was in the middle of barking at something until he realised that if he stopped he'd get food.
Don't know if that will be any help - after all, every dog is very different! Good luck though!
Sorry Mel, I have no idea how to make them stop barking, which is why I discourage all barking right from the word go (that's not to say they don't let out the odd woof ).
I made the mistake of teaching my Mum's toy poodle to bark, to alert her to the phone, doorbell, etc, because my Mum was very hard of hearing.
This was great until my Mum had to go into residential care and the poodle came to live with me. She barked at everything, you could drop a pin and she would bark....most annoying. I tried everything to get her to stop (barring electric shock collars as I don't agree with them), nothing worked.
After a quite a few complaints from the neighbours (and many more from Hubby) the poodle went to live with my sister on her farm...where she woofed very happily until her dying day .
Teaching them to bark is one thing....switching it off is something altogether different .
The only time he ever barks is if someone goes by the house or comes to the gate, so I used that. His word is 'ruff' cos I thought 'speak' was a bit boring!
And ever sinceI started teaching him and rewarding him after a single bark, that's all he does at the door too!
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Noisy pair of monkeys!
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