The calm watch-dog
approach to visitors
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| The task of training a family dog to be a calm watchdog is not difficult and will make visits much easier for your friends. |
MOST dogs will guard their homes or territories by nature. In the wild when an intruder comes too close, one dog within the family group will give a warning bark to alert the others to the intrusion. We cannot expect our dogs to behave in a different manner in their human families. Often when a visitor comes to the door, our dog will give a warning or guarding bark to alert us to the visitor.
A warning bark sounds as if it is in a high frequency and a little hysterical. This bark may be constant or a series of small barks with short breaks. A guarding bark sounds like: Grrrrrrr – bark, bark – Grrrrrrr. The amount of growling produced depends on how defensive the dog is. The bark may also be a deeper bark than usual.
Whether the barking is a warning or a guarding bark, your dog will have a high level of arousal, excitement or fear. You may see your dog react by lungeing forward, spinning around, barking, jumping up on your visitors or yourself, growling, running around, or he/she may be reacting with all of these behaviours.
Because of the high level of excitement, arousal or fear involved your dog will also have a high level of stress. This causes the muscles to become full of adrenalin which means they will become active. This is why it is not possible for your dog to keep still. Giving your dog something to hold in its mouth such as a toy or blanket can help him or her cope with the situation.
You may like to try the following task firstly with regular visitors who know you and your dog, then build up to visitors your dog does not know very well and then with strangers.
When a visitor comes to your door and your dog gives off a warning/guarding bark, tell your dog 'thank you for telling me', but do not touch the dog, just go to the door and stand between the door and your dog with your arms slightly stretched out to sides with palms facing back as in the above photo. Absolutely do not talk to your dog, or even look at him or touch him at this stage. Any verbal, physical or visual contact at this time would reward the dog for continuing to bark and increase the unwanted behaviour.
Open the door slightly and tell your visitor that you are training your dog and what you want him/her to do once you let them in. If your dog begins to bark once you open the door slightly, close it again making sure your body is positioned between the door and your dog.
Open the door again slightly, if dog barks again, close the door, if he does not bark at all, open the door a little more. Build this up, opening the door further if the dog does not bark and closing it if he barks until you are able to open the door completely and let your visitor in to the house.
Ask your visitor when he/she comes in just to say a quick hello to your dog, so your dog knows the visitor has acknowledged him/her and then to ignore your dog until he/she is settled and calm.
Once your visitor has come into the house give your dog something he/she can carry around or chew. This will help him/her to settle and calm down. You may need to place your dog on a leash the first few times your visitors come to help him/her cope, then unclip the leash once your dog has settled and calmed down beside you with a chew or a toy. If your dog approaches your visitor in a nice calm way, invite your visitor to talk to and stroke your dog. If dog does not approach your visitor, then do not allow your visitor to approach him/her. Give your dog the respect of having the choice in his/her own space to approach your visitor if he/she wants to.
Do not start playing with your dog as this will only make him more excited and give him the association that when visitors come its time for high levels of excitement. Dogs learn by association and if he/she associates visitors with the high level of excitement he/she will anticipate that excitement the moment there is a knock at your door and as a consequence may never learn to be calm around visitors.
This is quite an easy task as long as owner, visitors and dog follow these instructions and work together. - Nicole
