I'll be bark!

Thanks to Tony Knight for this story.


It seems that the issue of barking has become too much to bear for
some residents of California, so starting this week in Los Angeles, dog owners
now face $100 fines for repeated disturbance to neighbours caused by barking
dogs, and other cities are soon to follow. I recently noticed the scale of this
phenomenon while enjoying a hot air balloon ride last month. The sound of dogs
barking – mostly at the huge balloon sailing over their heads – was everywhere.

However, although I appreciate the Governator's decision, I do wonder what they
are going to suggest in order to stop the problem of dogs barking. I am worried
that sales of bark collars will soar (they cost more than $100 fine in some
cases which makes no sense), which ultimately are instruments of torture that do
not change a dog's mind. I bet they won't have discussed the reason why it
happens either, so yours truly will, AND sort it out too.

So what is the problem with the anti-bark collars? Here's one example that the
manufacturers would not have foreseen. I heard from some dog owners who had put a citronella acid collar on one of their dogs for excessive barking. They were
going through a canister of acid a week (not cheap stuff) and the collar was
working. One day they decided to sneak back to the house to see what was
happening (if anything). The sound of barking was already evident, yet when they
peeked inside the kitchen window, they saw the dog with the collar silently
sitting down, acid squirting in its face, activated by their other dogs, stood
around the collared one and barking. The collar was seen as the problem by them,
and barking is a way to try to get a danger to leave.

A dog barking while the owners are out is more than likely suffering from
separation anxiety, which can be greatly reduced by initially paying no
attention to dogs when you come back home. A dog barking at something while the
owners are in situ can be greatly helped by thanking the dog. That's it. Full
stop. Of course, that is not the full story but just doing those two things can
often dramatically change the dog's behaviour.