I'm in favor of an alert bark. This is a natural behavior, and a good safety measure. I do NOT want my dog to woof his damn head off the whole time I'm signing for my delivery or whatever. So the training is to praise them for alerting you, and to stop barking once you've acknowledged the alert.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I trained mine not to bark.

if you train them not to bark put a beware of dog sign on the door so people aren’t surprised by some huge large dog or a bunch of little dogs that are hard to catch and bring back inside

You train yours not to bark, but you don't train them not to run out?

Newsflash: each dog is more prone to certain behaviors than others. Some dogs will never stop barking unless they're put in a bark collar that zaps them (mine included, I tested the electric shock on myself first to make sure it wasn't painful). Some dogs will accept not barking, but can't stop themselves from running out. Some dogs are good with all of that but they steal food no matter what you do. Etc, etc.

Yes, we all like to bark at strangers coming to the door. Our dog has been trying to get us to stop, to no avail.

Mine barks. He is very proud of himself for protecting the house. So we never tried to stop it.

No bark. We find it irritating. If someone was at the door persistently without a human addressing it, I think they would then bark. Dogs are smart enough to learn context.
My dog growing up would only bark if it was my deaf grandmother at home — he knew she couldn’t hear the door.
My previous dog would stand by door to go outside. If no one responded, he would knock with his paw. If that didn’t work, he would give one bark. Very polite.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I trained mine not to bark.

if you train them not to bark put a beware of dog sign on the door so people aren’t surprised by some huge large dog or a bunch of little dogs that are hard to catch and bring back inside

You train yours not to bark, but you don't train them not to run out?

Best I could do.

Mine bark until I tell them to lie down.

It depends on where you live, how close your neighbors are, how many people come to your house, and what your protection needs are.

If you live in the country or a suburb in a house with some distance between neighbors, and don't get a ton of unannounced visitors, let them bark. It's not going to be all the time and it might actually serve a purpose of alerting you to people on the property.

If you live in a city where you are right nixtwith lots of people walking by all the time, you have to train them not to bark or (1) they will literally bark all day long, and (2) they will annoy the crap out of the people living right next to you who have to listen to your dog activating every 10 minutes. In dense neighborhoods, you also get the problem of one dog setting off all the dogs, and if this happens all the time, it's just a mess.

Although if you lived in an unsafe neighborhood in the city I might say never mind it's okay because it's truly for safety. But I mean an actual unsafe neighborhood, not like upper NW DC but you are just paranoid.

If you can train your dog to bark at strangers but not at friends, this is super helpful either way because it's nice when the dog doesn't get really worked up when like your sister or your next door neighbor come by.

Anonymous wrote:I trained mine not to bark.

if you train them not to bark put a beware of dog sign on the door so people aren’t surprised by some huge large dog or a bunch of little dogs that are hard to catch and bring back inside

You train yours not to bark, but you don't train them not to run out?

My dogs will bark until I go to the door, after that, they know there's no reason to bark since I showed up and am handling it.

Train to fetch a toy and carry that to the door on command. Give the command if you think you know who it is and are unconcerned.

They can always drop the toy, but if their mouth is full, they can't do a loud bark.

We have a large dog with an intimidating bark - and we do not discourage him from doing so. He's all bluff and no bite, but strangers don't know that.

I trained mine not to bark.

if you train them not to bark put a beware of dog sign on the door so people aren’t surprised by some huge large dog or a bunch of little dogs that are hard to catch and bring back inside

I let my mine bark. He’s being a good boy and doing his job to protect the house. He’s a big wimp so a big tough sounding bark is all the defense he provides.

I have a dog and my sister has a dog. I realized that my dog barks at everyone that comes to the front door, be it a family member or Amazon worker. My sister trained her dog not to bark at people coming to the house. Basically if he starts to bark, she says no bark and that’s it, even if it is a solicitor. It got me thinking, what does other people do?