Almost everyone with a gun dog probably has had that midnight phone call from one of the neighbors complaining about your barking pooch out in its backyard kennel. Or maybe there has been a knock on your motel room door from some fellow traveling hunter asking if you could control your dog's sleep-disturbing barking out in the back of your truck or in the confines of your dog trailer.

Or perhaps at home your dog wildly barks whenever the doorbell rings or the kids next door run through your backyard. In other words, if you own a gun dog, you probably have had, do have or will have some sort of a problem with barking.

Good Barking (the Alarm Type) Vs. Bad Barking (the Annoying Kind Caused by Anxiety)
Anyone with a gun dog in the house or outside kennel knows about barking. But not everyone knows why dogs bark or that there are specific types or kinds of barking, some of which are good while others are bad.

Good barking usually is the alarm type or a dog's natural instinct to warn everyone of something out of the ordinary that may be threatening to the status quo--a strange person walking past or into a dog owner's property, a loose dog wandering into a resident dog's territory, or some other possible danger created by changes in the immediate environment. Any of these can trigger a bout of practical barking designed to alert anyone who is listening to pay attention to a change in the ordinary that could be important.

Bad barking, on the other hand, is often created by avoidable canine anxiety, such as a dog made distraught by unrelieved confinement, loneliness, boredom, lack of exercise, or some other form of frustration that is signaled by barking.

These vocalizations of the bad kind can become habitual, excessive, and socially disturbing whether the dog lives in town or way out in the country.

In many cases, any uncontrolled barking can lead to problems in the family, in the neighborhood, or in the general community around home as well as on any trips to training grounds or to hunting sites.

Both good and bad barking need to be managed by shaping and controlling canine barking behavior through standard training methods reinforced with modern e-collars and by today's high tech bark collars.

Teaching Your Dog To Be Quiet On Command
Telling a barking dog to be "quiet" goes against a canine's natural instincts to announce a cause for concern that any dog may feel is necessary to share with its owner. Nowadays, however, most dog owners do not always share that concern and so prefer to control canine barking in a variety of circumstances.

Teaching a dog to be quiet when told is an important part of any dog's learning process and an important facet of its lifelong behavior pattern. A canine that won't be quiet on command can create a lifetime of trouble for itself and its owner.

Methods For Teaching "Quiet"
With five 70-pound-plus Spinone Italianos in the house, Lena Amirian needs to have control over their barking. "When my dogs are still puppies, I use a gentle hands-on method to get each pup to understand that barking is okay in some circumstances but not tolerated in others. By grasping a barking dog's muzzle, giving it a firm but not painful squeeze, and repeating the 'quiet' command, I can establish a clear connection between the bark and the correction," Amirian says.