Training a dog not to bark at cats.

[springchowie11]

Hello Members
I am wondering how to break your dog from it's bad habit of barking at cats and other unnessicary things

Thanks to all answers

springchowie11

[emmabeth]

Where and when and why is your dog barking at cats. What are the other 'unnecessary' things (in quotation marks because YOU might think it is unnecessary, but your dog clearly does not!).

Can you give us a run down of your dogs typical day, tell us about walks, food, training as well as the specifics about the barking.

To cut a long story short, you identify what the dog is getting out of the barking - if he is lacking in attention/physical or mental exercise then that needs to be increased (or the problem may well persist) - then you prevent barking from being rewarding (which generally means preventing him from seeing the things he barks at!) - then you give him an alternative behaviour to do or recondition him to expect something else when he sees those things.

HOW you go about doing all of this depends on the specifics of your case though.

[springchowie11]

well, my sister has been using him to scare stray cats off the property. And I was wondering if there was a way to break him out of the habit. he goes absolutely baserk when he sees a cat. If he can get to it, he'll chase it. other wise he will bark and will not calm down.

[springchowie11]

I don't walk him, my sister does and I am not allowed to train him because that is my sisters job also... for food do you mean what he eats on a regular basis?
Well he eats twice a day. He has purina biscuits and butch dogroll

how ever i cannot really see how this ties in with the whole thing. does this help?

[emmabeth]

He finds it rewarding when he goes nuts, and even MORE rewarding when the cat runs and he gets to chase it.

Stopping him seeing cats completely to start with will help enormously, so he doesn't get wound up by them. Block up windows with paper or frosted window film is a good start.

Finding an appropriate alternative game that is rewarding in a similar way, yet controlled by YOU (rather than at the whim of a cat), such as playing with a 'fox on a stick' type toy, will also help.

Occupying his brain with plenty of exercise and fun training so he has less spare time.

Why do all these questions help?

Most of what we do here is behaviour modification rather than dog training - training certain behaviours is frequently a part of it though.

To modify the behaviour of anyone, there is rarely ONE change to be made in ONE specific area, rather lots of little changes in many areas. If you read through the forums you will see we frequently ask people for as much detail as is possible on the dogs typical day, so we can see where changes need to be made.

If you have a dog who is wired to the moon over going nuts at cats, and then when I question you about his day, I find that he doesn't get enough exercise and someone is encouraging him to yell at cats sometimes, and sometimes he actually gets to chase them but he doesnt do any other training, AND he gets to sit in a window staring out at the yard all day watching for cats, then ALL these things need changing to fix the problem.

If you JUST tried to yell at him to tell him off - the chances are he'd think you were joining in, until you got to the point you scared him so badly he was frightened of you (most folk don't go that far but some do).

If you tried to use some form of physical aversive to stop him, say a smack or an e-collar - again, it wouldn't work - he would fear you, he may start to redirect his frustration onto whoever was punishing him, he may not realise the punishment is due to his behaviour and become MORE aggressive towards cats...

When we fix a behaviour problem we first have to recognise what is the root cause (or the most LIKEly root cause, sometimes it is just an educated guess!)/

The problem the owner usually is trying to fix is generally a symptom of something else.

In the case of your sisters dog, there are several probable causes - first and most obviously, someone has encouraged him to do this. Secondly, the behaviour is rewarding and importantly it is rewarding whether someone tells him to do it and praises him, or not. Thirdly, potentially this is one of the most or THE most fun thing he does in his typical day.

So the problem is that he is encouraged to bark and go nuts at cats, and is bored or under stimulated mentally, so he finds it SUPER fun.

Then the cure is to prevent him doing it (because he will do it even if you are not there to tell him to do it and reward him) and so prevent him being rewarded for doing it, obviously to STOP encouraging him to do it, and then to find him more interesting appropriate things to do.

Over time the habit should fade, though if you dont find something suitably exciting as a replacement then it wont (similarly if he is allowed to carry on the habit, he won't stop doing it).

So there is rarely one simple answer and we often have to start by working back through what has happened before to see where to start undoing stuff and re-doing it.

In your case, until the dogs owner stops encouraging him to chase cats, and prevents him from finding it rewarding, then replaces cat chasing with appropriate exercise and training, the dog will continue to chase cats.

I do not know a way to stop people teaching dogs to do dumb stuff.

[Fundog]

"I do not know a way to stop people teaching dogs to do dumb stuff."



Oh my gosh, do you know how wealthy you would be if you did?

[springchowie11]

When he barks and not stop. We bring him inside and make him sit and stay behind the couch where he is out of view of the streets.... If he really won't stop we put him in the bathroom for timeout.
I will hopefully, get him out of that habit with your help.
Thanks Emmabeth

[emmabeth]

Bringing him in when he barks is good but you need to be able to do it every single time.

If he is doing it because he is bored you also need to fix that.

If he does it indoors, whilst a time out might be useful, blocking the view using paper over the windows or frosted window film is a better long term solution - time outs must ONLY be for 10 seconds. Longer than this and he forgets why it happened and doesnt link it to his own behaviour (and dogs who spend hours timed out get more bored so things like barking at cats is more exciting!).