I had two comments about what to do when the demand barking your dog exhibits is not directed at you but at another dog in the house.  This is such a common (and annoying) puppyish (my scientific term for “juvenile”) behavior, I thought I would address it here.

If you haven’t already done so, go back and read my original post on demand barking.  Once you’ve read that, you ‘ll understand that it isn’t good enough to just not give the dog what he is demanding by barking, you must also remove the possibility of the dog gaining the reinforcement he is seeking.  So how the heck do you do that when it’s a dog’s attention he is seeking?

You remove the other dog.  No, that doesn’t mean you put the poor dog that’s being barked at in isolation.  It means you go get that dog and take her into another room for a treat, leaving the barker behind.

It really is simple as that, you can’t yell at the naughty dog because that will affect the poor good dog, and you can’t remove the naughty dog because then (at least for a few seconds) someone is paying attention to him.  Barking dogs need to be invisible.

After some time, if you are consistent, the dog-directed (or cat-directed, etc.) demand barking should stop happening, or at least drop in frequency, especially if the barker is a young pup that hasn’t had a lifetime of accidental reinforcement for demand barking.

What other frustrating things do your dogs do?