Excited Barking - Found Her Voice Help

[Snowball]

Hi

My 8 week old puppy (golden retriever) has setteld in well in her new home. However, goldie has a new found love of chasing the cat and letting out an excited bark . (the cat doesnt seem to mind, they get on quite well ) Now since I live next door to an absolutely nightmare barking dog, I do not want my puppy to go down that path and be a nuisance.

what can I do to discourage her when she barks? What techniques do you use to nip this in the bud. Have tried squirt of water, but she doesnt care - being a retriever loves water. Have tried shaking a noisy bottle with coins at the time, but dont think that did much ... so any hints, what to do???????

thanks heaps

Snowball

[corvus]

Nuisance barking and excited barking are two different things, and one will not necessarily lead to the other.

We have a very vocal pup in this house. We taught him to be quiet on cue with lots of rewards. When he gets REALLY excited it's a bit of a struggle for him, so we don't ask him to be quiet unless we can reward it with something pretty good. But saying his name and giving him something else to do really helps. I'm not really worried about him becoming a nuisance barker because when he's on watchdog duties he only lets out one burst of noise and then he's done. He only barks when there's something to bark at.

[Odin-Genie]

I agree with corvus, though my experience is only with my own dogs.

My elkhound has this excited, high pitched play bark. But otherwise he doesn't bark unless there is something to bark at.

My goldie on the other hand never barks in excitement. She palys silently. But she is the one I had a barking issue with sometime back.

[Snowball]

corvus,

How did you teach your dog to be quiet using cues and rewards? Sorry if it is a dumb question, I am new to dog world , but eager to learn.

cheers

Snowball

[corvus]

I don't entirely remember, Snowball.

I think I started out teaching him to bark on cue with the clicker. If I remember correctly, I was clicking and rewarding when he barked at me, and then I was teaching him a hand signal and only rewarding the bark when I had given the hand signal. If I remember correctly, before I'd really got the cue to bark sorted out, I was getting quiet moments while he was trying to figure out what to do for a click, so I stopped clicking for barks and started clicking for quiet instead. So we never did get speak on cue, but basically the whole reason I was trying to get speak on cue was because last time I taught a dog to be quiet on cue I started out with speak on cue, so I just skipped a step when the opportunity was there.

I think there's a thread about it in the dog tricks sub-forum of the training forum at the moment. http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?show...p;#entry4090807

ETA linky.

Edited November 5, 2009 by corvus