BARKING
Okay, let's get to grips with barking!
Barking is a dog's vocal communication. A dog should not be punished for barking, it's only "speaking." It is not necessarily a show of aggression, or of "dominance", or bad behaviour and dogs don't do it to annoy us!
Dogs bark, whine, growl and howl.
Some breeds have been bred for their aptitude to bark (hounds,guarding dogs etc) and some breeds don't waste their energy barking (racing dogs for example). You should always research a breeds characteristics before providing a home for it, that way you don't get any unexpected surprises!
Over the top barking IS painful for our ears and likely to attract disapproval from the neighbours to say the least.
Barking can be broken down into several forms..
Excitement barking
Warning barking
Fear barking
Guard barking
Frustration barking
Learned barking
In order to tackle problem barking we need to identify the form, ie what triggers the barking. Fortunately the bark is easily understood once you know what the forms sound like. In other words, we need to listen to what the dog is trying to communicate to us.
Only then, can we respond in a way the dog understands which will reduce the need to repeat his bark.
Most barking has inadvertently been unwittingly reinforced by our response (conditioning). Therefore, any learned behaviour can be unlearned. It's just a case of understanding the bark, identifying the trigger and counter-conditioning the dog's response. This does require exceptional timing or else you run the risk of "back-chaining" Dogs are very prone to this. Back chaining is where a dog associates a previous behaviour as being reinforced and thus rather than eliminate you actually increase the incidence of the unwanted behaviour. This is where clicker training comes into its own.
Dogs will and need to bark and I will NEVER teach total elimination of barking, just how to control it. If you don't want to hear a dog ever bark, don't provide a home for one!
By appropriate knowledge and response it is possible to extinguish the unwanted barking. However, I stress the unwanted barking and not the dog's normal vocal communication. You wouldn't stop a cat meowing or a horse neighing after all. Dogs need to bark, it's in theIr DNA!
I can help you understand what your dog is trying to tell you and with this knowledge you can counter-condition your dog response through positive training methods.