Little yappy dogs are worth their weight in gold to hard of hearing people like me.

One day a  few years ago, I was sitting up here writing, and my yappy bichon (Dandylion) was yapping  and YAPPING and YAPPING downstairs.

I teach a release cue [0] (you'll find discussion of it in other posts on my blog), which is "okay." In my application of clicker training [0], I teach my animals that a cued behavior may continue to earn clicks and treats until they hear the release cue. "Okay" means that the opportunity to earn reinforcement [0] for the previously cued behavior [0] is over. So, I find it works to end a behavior that has been cued by the environment too. My dogs usually bark because they want to alert me about something (not always though. sometimes they are talking to the neighbor's dog) and so if I say "thanks, okay," they stop because they figure they have done their job.

So I called to Lion, "Okay!" I didn't feel like moving. He kept barking. "Okay okay okay!" He wouldn't stop yapping. So, hmmph, I trudged downstairs totally annoyed. He wanted me to actually LOOK at whatever dumb thing he was barking at?   I remember thinking, remote control dog training doesn't work any better than remote control parenting, darn it.

And there was Lion, still yapping, staring at our stovepipe. OH! It was glowing red, overheating, well into the dangerous zone. Maybe it was making some noise that I couldn't hear. Dandylion was yapping to prevent a fire! Good boy!!! NOW he stopped barking. I fed him turkey. Since then, he has alerted me to the phone ringing, the cat wanting to come in, all sorts of things. The deal we have is, you go ahead and tell me about it, and then you can stop barking.

 So, dogs do have minds of their own. They bark to tell us things. They don't always respond to our cues, because they are TRYING to cue US!

Last summer, Tigerlily did the same thing. We were getting ready to go for a walk, and she started to bark. I knew that a friend of ours appeared to be hiding in the woods down in our driveway, but actually, he was just camping and using his wireless to connect to our computer network. Tigerlily was trying so hard to tell me about him, and I was saying, "That's our friend, it's okay, yup, yes, alright, no problem, okay, okay, okay," but she didn't know what I knew. So not until we walked down the driveway, I called out "hello" to our friend, he responded with a cheery good morning that Tigerlily visibly relaxed, stopped barking.

I think the best way to stop unnecessary barking is to listen to what the dog's got to say. When my neighbor's dog starts calling to our dogs, "Can Lion and Tiger come out o play? woof woof?" I bring my dogs inside and end the conversation.