Barking Buddy
We’ve had Buddy with us now for about five months. He has settled in nicely and we with him. The one thing that is still going on that we want to correct is that the little guy does like to bark. I sort of understand why a 5.5 pound ball of energy might find the need to make himself known by barking, but it seems to be more than that that’s going on. Buddy is a fairly easy to manage pup in that while he never likes being left behind, he does deal with it and doesn’t seem inclined to destroy anything in our absence. He is also pretty used to going to daycare with Colean and when he is not getting bitten, he seems to do just fine in the company of other dogs and few new people. He also did quite well with Natasha while we were in SE Asia, but that seems like an easy gig for him since he remains in his familiar surroundings and gets to go on daily field trips to the beach or wherever Natasha chooses for the day’s activities. He does seem excited to have us return and get back into his household routine, so it all seems to work just fine.
We have guests staying over at his house with some degree of regularity. The guest rooms are not part of Buddy’s regular zone of involvement (by design since that gives us fewer places to look for any deposits he may choose to make). When anyone other than us comes to the house, whether for 5 minutes of for an extended stay, that represents a disruption to Buddy’s routine and he gets very aware and agitated by it. That takes the form of barking and jumping up and down against their legs…sometimes leading to what passes in Buddy as a little leg humping dance to presumably establish some semblance of dominance. This is where I think Buddy probably suffers form some sort of inferiority complex due to his size. Everyone and everything is bigger than him and he seems quite aware of that and not altogether happy about it.
I have noticed that Buddy tends to bark on two occasions. He barks as a protective measure when he hears, sees or senses something amiss or in motion outside of wherever he is situated. That can take the form of barking when Joventino is in the yard and is visible outside or when someone drives up to the house for a visit, a delivery or to do some sort of service. This extends to his barking if he is in one room and hears something going on in another room. I am reasonably sympathetic to this type of barking since it seems pretty fundamental to self-preservation. The key to Buddy being a good dog in this regard is his ability to accept instruction to stop barking once the threat is understood by us and we can reassure him that all is well.
The second reason Buddy barks is a mot more problematic. I think we all understand that dogs are dominance-based animals that inherently understand that among themselves, there is generally an alpha or leader of the pack. Most dogs want to be in control and be the alpha, but they are also pretty competent at figuring out the hierarchy in their pack so that they can figure out whether they are dominant or must be more submissive. What is far less clear is how this dominance structure occurs with a pet dog in a human household. Some dog trainers like the famous Cesar Millan believe that the same hierarchical mechanism happen in the home as they do in the dog pack. He believes that if an owner wants to properly train and control his dog, he must establish that he is the alpha and then the dog will be properly submissive and be more controllable. Lots of other animal behaviorists have a very different view. They have discovered through research that dogs operate very differently in the human home than they do in the dog pack. They characterize the relationship with humans as one of super dominance since we tend to control every aspect of their existence, which is rarely the case in the dog pack. I read that to mean that dogs in packs are somewhat more pragmatic and are not as prepared to completely carry a dog in the extreme, whereas humans are far more prepared to go all-out for their dogs.
This is particularly evident in the humanization of dog medical care. In nature, an ailing or disabled dog falls by the wayside, but increasingly, owners are prepared to treat their dog as a family member and give them medical longevity they would not otherwise enjoy. On a less extreme basis, small “inside” dogs like Buddy are more or less completely reliant on us, for food, shelter/comfort, bodily functions and even play/amusement. This manifests itself in Buddy wanting to control the state of play of his immediate surroundings. He knows he needs us and that makes him want us to stay in place where we are at all times. If we are sitting in the living room and I decide to get up for some reason, that constitutes a change in the status quo that Buddy is uncertain about and doesn’t want. He does not so much want to dominate me, but he does want me to stick around to be available to meet his needs. That makes him bark when I get up or sometimes if I so much as twitch. That causes us to vocalize things that have no real ability to impact him like telling him that we are just going to the bathroom or to the kitchen, as though he could understand that complex conclusion. His barking is simply an announcement that he would prefer that nothing change.
At night, when we are in bed, Buddy does not mind too much if I change position, even if I sit up on the edge of the bed. But if I stand up to go to the bathroom, he can get set off and start barking. It used to be a big problem since his rather shrill bark is hard to sleep through. He seems to have come to understand that the nighttime bathroom routine is self-correcting with us coming back to bed rather quickly. This barking problem has become far less problematic. If I stay in the bathroom for, say, a half hour (which is often the case as I read emails or some such thing), I get a bit of barking as a potential intruder to the bedroom, but l;title or no barking as I walk back to my side of the bed.
Another noticeable aspect of Buddy’s barking behavior is that where Buddy is not so food sensitive as a cause for barking, he is very sleep sensitive, which is to say that if he is awakened, his first reaction is to bark until he gets his wits about him. Some animals wake in complete awareness of their surroundings (I know I do), and yet others take more time to recognize where they are and what their circumstances are. That uncertainty is a threat that can easily be met with some barking.
There are ways to address barking. We are not inclined to use an electronic collar that might shock the offending barker. That is too cruel in or view. The spray bottle as a means of annoying the dog out of barking is a workable approach, but is as much an annoyance for us as it is for him. What we do use is a high pitched remote that clearly bothers Buddy audibly. He knows that when we are holding the orange remote in his direction that he wants no part of it. That alone makes him stop barking for a moment. It does require you to stay consistent with the threat of beeping it in his direction, but it does seem to control the barking reasonably well. So, Buddy will always bark at external threats. Our objective is to cure him of barking at internal changes to the status quo. I don’t think the awakening barking is as easy to address, but we will keep trying using affection to that end as much as possible, with the occasional high-frequency beep.