excessive barking

[JEANNIUS]

Good monring,

I have a five year old Jack Russell ***** who has a problem with excessive barking at people walking up and down the street and especially the post man. She also barks at people when she is out although not all the time.
She was a neglected rescue dog and has had puppies and since been speyed.
She lives with myself and elderly mother who is with her all day but is driving us both to constantly shout at her through her constant barking at people and dogs. Mum gets wound up which winds me up and we both end up shouting at her. She stops when the curtains are closed and as we have a through lounge /diner we have no where else to put her to stop her seeing people and dogs go up and down the road. she has very sharp hearing and hears all noises outside.

She pulls on the lead but she wears a harness out as she pulls so much but at present I don't want to use a harness that stops her pulling. I try to pull have back when she pulls excessively and start her to walk forward again and reward her if she stops.

Indoors I reward her if she comes down from the window and stops barking but she just goes back and starts again.
She eats a dried food probably the worst I can buy due to EEC additives and animal derivitives and have tried her on other food which she is reluctant to eat. I add cooked turker to her meals as she loves chicken and turkery.
We have had dogs for many years and have had issues with one or two of them but not this excessive barking.
She has her own bed downstairs and likes to sit with us in mum's chair and on the back of mine and she sleeps at night on my bed, which is a double.
I seem to think she is worse when I am there.
I walk her once a day at the moment but hope to get this up to twice and longer walks on my day and weekends off. I try playing with her but it only lasts five minutes as she stops playing. I play with her ball and try and fill her Long too but as I say only lasts a very short while. I expect she needs more stimulation but what i do not know. I am in my fifties and therefore cannot run very well now so agility would be out.

Can anyone help me.

Many thanks

Jeannius

[Mattie]

Good monring,

I have a five year old Jack Russell ***** who has a problem with excessive barking at people walking up and down the street and especially the post man. She also barks at people when she is out although not all the time.
She was a neglected rescue dog and has had puppies and since been speyed.
She lives with myself and elderly mother who is with her all day but is driving us both to constantly shout at her through her constant barking at people and dogs. Mum gets wound up which winds me up and we both end up shouting at her. She stops when the curtains are closed and as we have a through lounge /diner we have no where else to put her to stop her seeing people and dogs go up and down the road. she has very sharp hearing and hears all noises outside.

Stop shouting at her, she thinks you are joining in with the barking and like her having fun.

She pulls on the lead but she wears a harness out as she pulls so much but at present I don't want to use a harness that stops her pulling. I try to pull have back when she pulls excessively and start her to walk forward again and reward her if she stops.

You need to take action to stop pulling before she pulls, have a look at this thread viewtopic.php?f=20&t=858

Indoors I reward her if she comes down from the window and stops barking but she just goes back and starts again.

Is she jumping on furniture to get to the window? If so, remove the furniture so she can't use it or block it so she can't. If she can't get to the window she won't bark. To her the reward is for getting down and not for not barking so she goes back to the barking.

She eats a dried food probably the worst I can buy due to EEC additives and animal derivitives and have tried her on other food which she is reluctant to eat. I add cooked turker to her meals as she loves chicken and turkery.

What are you feeding her?

We have had dogs for many years and have had issues with one or two of them but not this excessive barking.
She has her own bed downstairs and likes to sit with us in mum's chair and on the back of mine and she sleeps at night on my bed, which is a double.
I seem to think she is worse when I am there.
I walk her once a day at the moment but hope to get this up to twice and longer walks on my day and weekends off. I try playing with her but it only lasts five minutes as she stops playing. I play with her ball and try and fill her Long too but as I say only lasts a very short while. I expect she needs more stimulation but what i do not know. I am in my fifties and therefore cannot run very well now so agility would be out.

Can anyone help me.

Many thanks

Jeannius

There is a thread on mind games but I can't find it, sorry, this would be good for her as well as clicker training, viewtopic.php?f=20&t=513

[emmabeth]

You can get frosted window film relatively cheaply (its not cheap, but its a lot cheaper than frosted glass!) which cuts out a lot of the 'view' out of a window, meaning you can have the curtains open.

It wont cut out the sounds but cutting out the view will usually make a BIG difference (its also easy to wipe clean and to remove if you no longer want it and comes iwth pretty 'clear' patterns at a height that the dog cannot reach so there are bits you can still see through).

YOu may well find that once she cannot see out of the window, the sounds will stop bothering her too as they will no longer signal that there is someone out there to go bark at...


Changing to a better food may well help, but also how much exercise is she currently getting - and how much training/games etc during the day?

Please do have a read of the threads Mattie has linked, especially the loose lead walking one. You might find that the process of not 'rewarding' (ie by moving forwards) the pulling has to start before you even leave the house, so a really good tip is to make your walks a 'time' based thing rather than a 'destination' based thing. So walks are now '10 minutes of loose lead walking, 3 x a day' rather than 'we go to the park and back'. This will help YOU hugely to not get frustrated and resort to pulling back on the leash.

[jacksdad]

As someone with a Jack Russel mix, I can tell you Matti and Emmabeth are spot on with their advice.

Exercise and mental stimulation are a MUST for JRs. Once I understood this, life with my dog is getting better every day. Another thing I have learned that helps is that exercise and mental stimulation can come in many forms. It doesn't have to be only long walks and obedience training. It can be learning to do silly tricks through clicker training. Or it can be games that you play in the house. You can play fetch, hid n' seek, or you can hid some of his kibble around the house and have him find it. Mentally tired dogs are just as sleepy as physically tired dogs.

My dog also barks very easily at people passing by or noises. For the noises, I call my dog to me, work to get his attention then ask him to do something. for example I will call him to me, then soon as he looks at me I ask for a sit or watch me or some other behavior. He can not bark and do what I am asking at the sometime, so the barking stops quickly. This is more management then a cure, but it does pull his attention from the thing that excited him, puts it on you and cuts short his barking much quicker then yelling at him.

since you have a JRT, you might find this youtube channel interesting. this girl has trained her JRT to do some amazing things all with positive reinforcement and clicker training.

http://www.youtube.com/user/JustJesse197