Barking madness

Brandy is a barker. There is no getting around it. She may be little but her bark is loud and strident (like those big old-fashioned alarm clocks guaranteed to get you up even if you've only had an hour's sleep last night). She barks when the phone rings, when the doorbell rings, when family comes home (even when we open the door with our key and not ring the bell),when someone drops something loud in the house, when there is any sort of steady noise (like a car alarm or house alarm) outside the house or when thunder growls. Basically she takes any excuse to bark.

Barking to alert the humans that something unusual is happening is ok but she does not shut up even when we, the humans, acknowledge the event and tell her to keep quiet. She does stop barking once the phone stops ringing or whoever is coming in to the house actually gets into the house, then she is all wagging tail and happy yaps. I have had the phone and the doorbell ringing at the same time and yes, there was barking madness and no, I was not a happy human.


(My sister thought Brandy had green eyes 'cos of all the photos I took when her eyes turned out like this, but it's the camera flash. I don't know why but she sometimes sits like this with one of her hind legs sticking out. I think it's bad posture and have tried to correct her many times.)


We have tried different ways to try and stop the barking madness, scolding her, reassuring her, distracting her, calmly and quietly telling her no, yelling even but the madness continues. I watch Oprah sometimes and she has this dog trainer guru (I forgot his name) that comes on every so often and his approach to dog training is to show the dog you are the boss. He says that pet dogs prefer to be part of your pack and once you've established that, it is easy to train the dog not to bark or jump around wildly. And it seems to work for him. I have a strong suspicion that humans are not the dominant party in Brandy's world.