CASE REPORT: Barking Mad
BY NICHOLAS DODMAN, DVM
AKC Family Dog July/August

A few years back, some troubled owners came to see me with their 2-year-old, 106-pound, neutered male Labrador Retriever in tow. Rudy was a handsome dude, but he was driving his owners mad with his incessant barking. He barked when they tried to discuss anything or when they were on the phone. He barked when they had friends over, and he barked when they were busy doing practically anything. And it wasn't just a couple of barks here and a couple of barks there. These barking bouts were prolonged and were an everyday feature of life with Rudy, making things very unpleasant for his owners. Rudy had always engaged in this behavior, but over the previous eight months it had escalated to a crescendo pitch, driving his owners to seek help from me.
As usual, I listened carefully to everything they told me and took notes. I asked the owners more detailed questions about what triggered his behavior and, in the most general terms, found out that a combination of his lack of anything better to do, plus their preoccupation with matters that did not concern him, was at the root of the problem. I asked Rudy's owners how they responded to his barking. They said that they usually tried to calm him down with sweet talk or would give him a time out in their van. It turns out that Rudy was also evidencing mild to moderate dominance aggression toward his owners, and was territorially or predatorily aggressive to any animals that appeared on television in the living room.
Considering all the facts, I came to the following conclusions about Rudy's almost incessant bouts of barking. The first was that I thought his motivation was to distract his owners and seek attention for himself. Second, I thought his willfulness or dominance was that innate property of his character that drove him to be pushy. Third, I concluded that his trademark barking had been reinforced as a learned behavior.
My first suggestion to Rudy's owners was that they should completely ignore Rudy's barking until it stopped. If they absolutely could not tolerate another single bark, they should either separate themselves from Rudy or give him a time-out in a restful location. To make it clear to Rudy that it was his behavior that was causing the physical separation, I advised Rudy's owners to use a bridging stimulus, such as a duck call or the sound made by a tuning fork. This neutral stimulus would emphasize that pivotal point in time at which attention withdrawal occurred. As a heads-up, I advised them that the behavior might get worse before it got better and exhorted them to commit themselves to the program for at least three weeks. I also asked them to engage the famous leadership program sometimes known as "no free lunch," by which Rudy would have to earn all valued resources from them, including food. I also advised them about the use of a head halter and indoor training lead to communicate their leadership at key times when absolute control of the situation was mandated. For example, I advised them to use the head halter to lead him from the room into the timeout area when they had finally had enough. Under no circumstances were they to console him or address him using any emollient language, >and they were not to pet him at any time when he was barking.
RUDY TAKES CHARGE
Positive results were reported by Rudy's owners even sooner than I expected. Two weeks later he was responding "wonderfully" to the attention-withdrawal strategy. As predicted, they had seen an initial increase in barking, followed by a decrease. They attributed a good deal of their success to their unyielding attitude and the use of the head halter.
In retrospect, Rudy's owners appreciated that he needed to be paid more attention when he was behaving in an acceptable way, and they realized that they should not pay him any attention at all for behaviors they did not want to encourage. It was as if a lightbulb of
understanding had come on over their heads. They understood precisely how rewarding their previous attention to Rudy had been during bouts of barking, ensuring that he would employ the same strategy again when he felt left out. They also realized that putting him in the van for barking was not a deterrent, because its comfortable interior was one of the dog's favorite places to be. Unbeknownst to them, when they put him outside in the van they were not punishing him, they were actually rewarding him.
Confining Rudy in a less attractive place helped plug this loophole. Rudy wound up a much calmer dog, and one who finally knew on which side his bread was buttexed. His owners were thrilled with the improvement and were able to reclaim their sanity and the asylum of their own home.

Nicholas Dodman is a veterinarian, behaviorist, and founder of the Animal Behavior Clinic at Tufts University. He is the author of If Only They Could Speak: Stories About Pets and Their People.