Expert Article

Comfortable Dog / Quiet Dog

Quite often a person entering our center for the first time during daycare business hours asks me, "Don’t you have any dogs back there today?"

That same person is usually very surprised to peer through the door window leading back to our training/daycare area and see anywhere from twenty dogs to forty dogs peering back at them. The next question tends to go something like this, "How come they aren’t all barking after all they are dogs aren’t they?"

Here is my insight, philosophy and reply on the subject. Dogs tend to bark for a variety of reasons:

• Alert of an intrusion upon their territory
• Issue a warning to "back off"
• Anxiety, caused by many different stimuli
• Only occasionally, to entice another dog to play or interact

The long and the short of it is dogs that are allowed to bark incessantly are in an overly aroused state of mind. This means they aren't in their "comfort zone". A barking dog is also much less likely to take any direction from a human, which can quickly lead to an unsafe situation when dealing with a large pack of dogs.

I am not saying that the dogs at our center never bark, but they certainly don't always bark! Why? They are happy, stable and comfortable with their environment. We pride ourselves here at Come, Sit, Stay & Play on sending dogs home with good behaviors learned, not bad ones picked up throughout the course of the day.