How To Stop Your Dog Barking At Cats Or Birds
This is another example of alert barking for most dogs, also its part of their natural instinct as a hunter.
Most dogs nowadays spend their days watching tv and eating snacks… just look at Instagram or Facebook for evidence of this!
They don’t need to hunt any more, but that instinct is still in there somewhere.
Some dogs are still bred as working and hunting dogs, so their instincts will be much stronger!
Certain breeds such as Jack Russell Terriers – or any terrier – have been bred for hunting over generations and still have that strong instinct embedded in them.
If you have a terrier or a dog that was bred for hunting, it will probably be harder to train them to stop barking at animals in the garden.
So, what can you do if your dog barks at cats or birds in the garden? It’s tricky but there a few ideas you can try.
Just because a dog’s natural instincts is telling them to bark at birds and cats, doesn’t make them a dangerous dog who wants to hurt other animals – it just means they are warning you or are even excited about the intruders and want to chase!
As dog owners, we have to try and remember that it’s a natural reaction for a dog to chase something small and fluffy and to try and encourage them to just look not chase.
I personally think that teaching your dog to stop barking at cats or birds is one of the harder things to do, you don’t have control over what comes into your garden or sits on your fence/roof.
Most of the time your dog might be in the garden without you, ours have a separate dog-only area we call the dog run but is just a toilet area. So, if our dogs are in the run, they are unsupervised as it’s been made safe for them to be in there alone for short periods of time.
I’ve tried leaving the dogs the whole garden to run around in over the years and my flowers are not grateful. I’m a keen gardener so I like to try and grow plants rather than have them dug up and eaten!
A big problem of the dogs being unsupervised in the garden is you can’t see what else comes into the garden. If a cat or bird appears and the dog barks, then you know about it – and so do the neighbours. Which can cause trouble sometimes.
Training without you being there in person isn’t going to amount to much. So, the best idea is to go out with your dog every time until they realise that barking at cats and birds isn’t acceptable.
Being in the garden every time your dog is out there isn’t always realistic though. We have 6 kids and a houseful of other pets as well as the dogs, plus I work from home so I can’t sit in the garden all day with the dogs! (Though I would love to!)
So instead, start off by being out there every time and if they bark at a curious cat or dim pigeon, try the distraction techniques I gave you before.
Try the distractions of toys, bed, tricks, play a game with them, make being with you much more interesting than some silly bird.
Reward them when they join in with whichever distraction you are trying, no treats unless they are quiet and don’t bark.
If this doesn’t work, try calling them to you instead. If they know the come command or just their name, call them over to you instead of using toys. It just takes a quick break in their focus on the cat to make them stop barking.
This is then the time to praise them as they have left the cat, stopped barking and come to you. It sounds simple to us but to a dog, it’s a much bigger thought process and more difficult because they have to overcome their natural instincts to do as you say.
Don’t give them treats when they bark – this confirms to the dog that barking is the right thing to do and they will just bark more!
Even if it’s a few seconds of quiet, you can praise your dog. To begin with, even a few seconds of quiet and ignoring the cat/bird/doorbell will be all you and your dog can manage.
But that’s good!! A few seconds is a few seconds more than before!
Don’t think you will get it straight away; you won’t be able to get your dog to completely ignore any intruder the first time. Or second, or third…
It takes time, and the best way to train is with time, praise, and rewards.
Like when you are training a dog to sit, if they sit even for a few seconds that’s progress! So, reward it!
Keep trying, it won’t happen overnight. No training does. So cut you and your dog some slack.