It’s part of my dog’s job. He watches at the door and barks. Same as my cat positioning herself by the window to bird watch.

I like the barking. I’m single and far from my neighbors and he’s big with a deep intimidating bark. I’d have trained him differently in a condo or something, but he’s the worlds biggest wimp and 100% food motivated, so the bark is the only defense i get. If someone walked in with a treat, he’d welcome them then instantly give up the safe password.

I find it incredibly annoying. But at the same time I don’t hate it because I guess it could be helpful if we ever had an intruder. We’ve trained her to mostly stop upon hearing the “quiet” command but it’s not perfect.

I wouldn't think you could train a dog not to bark ~ that's news to me. Not sure I believe it.

My dog does a lot of alert barking. It's a bit much, but mostly I don't have an issue with that. Dogs need a job, and this is his job. What I do have an issue with is him not stopping when prompted to. We are working on this.

Depends on how you train your dog. There’s not a lot of nuance in dog thinking. Some will feel very proud of themselves for protecting you from that man that keeps putting paper through the mail slot. Some want to be this mystery man’s best friend. Reward accordingly. It’s not like they can tell who is friend or foe. Unless a golden retriever. Everyone friend for them.

This is why it's important to choose the correct breed for your family. Breeding is so important and many have traits that you can't train out of them. Like good luck getting a collie to not herd. For some reason, people think they can just go get a dog based on it's looks and that they can train that dog to be the dog they want. It's the other way around. Find a breeder for the personality you want.

We have always trained our small dogs to never bark. I don't want them barking at anything, ever. Current dog will bark if startled, but not bark at birds, squirrels, doorbells.

As puppies, we rang the doorbell and then gave a treat every time. Now they're just calm while the doorbell rings. My dog is 5lbs though and doesn't jump up or run out the door. If your dog is bigger, they train a dog to go to its bed when the doorbell is rang. I feel like the bigger your dog, the more training they need.

My dog wags his tail. Not a guard dog in any way. (he's a rescue and came to us like this, we did not train it)

There is no best way since it is based on owner preference. Do barks annoy you/ give you a headache? Give you a sense of protection? And its not just a sense, its well studied and many have their own experiences of barks detering crime. Do you have young children who need naps? Someone working at home? Someone with hearing issues that needs a bit extra noise to hear when guests arrive? Do you like to heat dogs express themselves naturally and "talk" to you like huskies and chihuahuas? Some breeds love communicating out loud and some have zero need for it and even when they bark it sounds muffled.

I lean on letting them bark. We even “hunt” together and scan the horizon on the window looking for rabbits or other monsters like the mailman. He’s a good guard dog.

Ours has never barked at anyone coming to the door, we didn't have to train her. She's very people friendly, and, thus, a terrible guard dog

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

Whatever happened to having a guest use a good ole door bell to alert you?

Yeah all those burglars who use door bells sure thing…

Anonymous wrote: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.

Whatever happened to having a guest use a good ole door bell to alert you?

Anonymous wrote: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.

This is where I fall as well. I want them to be able to settle and be quiet at my instruction but I have no desire to train out an alert bark. It seems unnatural and I kinda want to know if we have someone lurking around at 3am.