Expert: Alan J Turner, SATS LL1 - 3/21/2007

Question
I have a 10 yr. old chocolate lab. We have had her since whe was 7 wks. old. She is a house dog and follows me everywhere. She begs to go fishing or riding in truck and I let her go as much as possible. The problem is that she has always been hyper. She barks when excited about going walking,riding in truck or boat. When aproaching the boat landing after a fishing trip, I tie her in boat to keep her from getting hurt while docking boat.She barks constantly until I get her to the truck. Around the house you could never tell she would act like this. She is very calm but gets excited and barks about things like company arriving, getting paper etc.  

Answer
Dear Thomas,
Thanks for the question. Since she is 10 and has "always been hyper", she has a huge history of barking when she is excited. The cure will be a slow process.

Hyper dogs need more exercise. Start a program of daily walks, two a day would be best.

Instead of focusing on how to stop the out-of-control barking, focus on starting an alternate behavior.

The fix involves teaching her to relax on cue. Once she will relax, you start practicing relax when there are small distractions. Then you methodically add more distractions and practice in more exciting environments.

For example, suppose your goal is teach your dog to ‘relax-when-people-visit’.  Identify all the skills and behaviors that make up ‘relax-when-people-visit’ behavior.

Teach and practice each skill with various levels of distractions. First you might teach the dog to sit, down, and relax inside your house when it is quiet. Next, you might practice when house members are sitting…. standing…. walking….. passing doorways……waving their arms, clapping, jumping, et cetera.

Once your dog can sit, down and relax inside the house with house members as the distractions, you start all over and practice with family members entering the house. Finally, you practice the same sequences with willing visitors.

You should hold these practice sessions when you have total control of the classroom environment. That is – when you can guide your dog into choosing the correct behavior. Set up the environment so your dog has very limited choices of which behaviors to perform. Once he masters the current grade, introduce another piece of information and move up a grade.

During these well-planned practice sessions, your dog has only a few choices. Because you have a line attached to your dog, none of those choices include mug-the-people behaviors!

Good luck!
AT
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