Barking At Me....lol

[WillowGirl]

I have a 14 week old Dogue de Bordeaux..... she does a lot of sleeping and eating and growing....which is great but... the last couple of days she has turned up beside my bed ( while I am laying on it using my laptop) andshe sits and barks at me. lol, then if I don't acknowledge her, she starts jumping up, front paws on bed!

She is not very vocal usually, and it actually cracks me up I just don't want to encourage bed jumping because I will be greatly displeased if she jumps up on my bed when she is bigger!!

Anyone else's pup really cheeky? Do I ignore her when she barks at me? any ideas?

[Simply Grand]

Ah haha I am very familiar with this! My 5 month old Sheltie is quite the barker. I've worked on it by looking away and freezing until he's quiet for a few seconds then calmly looking back, telling him he's good and continuing with what I was doing. If he barks again repeat. Takes patience and consistency but it's working.

Re jumping on the bed, i'd start off with the ignoring and if/when the paws hit the bed I'd give a firm growly NO then back to ignore and freeze.

She may be a bit young to fully understand what you want from her so is still learning purely from your reactions so it's important to be consistent, firm but not angry or scary.

[jamesn184]

My puppy barks and growls when I ignore her as well.

When she was still inside she used to try and jump on the couch... got pretty bad in the end when we were eating dinner she used to jump up and get her front paws on my tray and try to get at my food!

Id give her a firm NO! but she kept doing it.. thats something you really cannot ignore while trying to eat! She got a time out after that.

I found everything she did was to get attention... oh and tried those stay off sprays.. none of them worked

[Nekhbet]

dont worry Dogues are total bed hogs. My boy loves a cuddle and thinks he can easily fit in your lap even at his massive size.

They are incredibly human driven dogs and she wants your attention. I get the same thing if I dont give mine enough attention it's usually a massive paw splatting me followed by a big sigh for being ignored

[corvus]

Ah haha I am very familiar with this! My 5 month old Sheltie is quite the barker. I've worked on it by looking away and freezing until he's quiet for a few seconds then calmly looking back, telling him he's good and continuing with what I was doing. If he barks again repeat. Takes patience and consistency but it's working.

That's basically how I handled Erik's attention-seeking barks as well. He was such a little twerp. He would come into my study and stand there looking at me and bark. If I did ANYTHING at all his eyes would light up and he stopped barking and the tail would wag excitedly. I had to train myself to completely fail to respond to him. He was trying to make me acknowledge him, so really, anything I might do in response was a reward.

I eventually managed to teach him a much more polite and tolerable way of asking to be acknowledged. Whenever he sat quitely by me and looked up with his cute little bright and sparkly face, I would give him attention. He is 2 now, and will still bark to get attention in certain circumstances, but more likely to sit and look up at us with that impossibly engaging look he has. Who can ignore him when he's being so cute!

So be careful with responding to the paw swipes and jumping up. You don't want to accidentally reinforce it.

[WillowGirl]

Thanks for your replys. She has stopped jumping up. Still barks for attention though. I'm starting to think my big boy I lost last year ( also a DDB) was very polite and well behaved!!! He would follow me everywhere and sit on my feet half break my leg leaning on it etc, this little miss just goes and does her own thing, then comes back and barks at me! She is so much more cheeky!!

And Nekhbet, I can tolerate many things, dogs on my bed are not one of them I have a hard enough time getting the kids out of it!!! ;)