Barking and aggressive at visitors

[Belgrave]

Desperately seeking help from you wise sages!

Our Herb is 4 years old and came to us in lockdown. Hence no visitors, online training with a split screen with five other dogs which was just chaos, and children who were young at the time so spoiled him like another child. So our bad, we didn’t get off to the strictest start with him, albeit the lack of socialization and getting used to visitors to the home wasn’t our fault. 
 

He’s a typical Cairn in all respects and we adore him. However when visitors come he makes things impossible and is sometimes very aggressive and it’s getting worse. He loves it when they arrive, then one or two minutes in he starts barking incessantly at them and the barking and stance quickly gets aggressive. In some instances he has bitten them. We now have a house lead and when he barks we tell him firmly no and put him in his crate. However he barks in the crate for up to an hour at a time until the visitors have gone.

Last week as I was putting him in the crate he managed to slip his lead and ran back to the visitor and bit her on her arm. This weekend we had the in-laws to stay and he barked very aggressively at them and would doubtless have bitten them given half the chance. He spent the entire first evening barking in his crate and the next morning started again as soon as he saw them. We ended up taking him to a dog sitter for the weekend where he’s been sometimes before and loves, hence he had a better weekend and so did we. However she has also noticed he cannot regulate himself once he starts getting worked up.

We’ve tried putting him in his crate before visitors arrive but as soon as he hears them he starts. It’s now at the point that we avoid having people here. 
 

I have a behaviorist coming next week but tbh we’ve had several before and he does all the exercises perfectly when the trainer is here but in ‘real life’ situations once he starts barking we’ve lost him, he’s in a red zone and nothing, but nothing, will get through to him. And there is little we’ve found that works to stop the barking in the first place. He will not be distracted by anything.

Please help! We want him to feel more settled with visitors and we want visitors to see the Herb we know and love!!! 

 

 

[bradl]

Welcome. Hope a behaviorist is able to get you and your dog pointed in a good direction!

Barking is. a self-reinforcing behavior for dogs and in addition to alerts and warnings can also be calls for attention, relief of boredom, saw a squirrel once, air molecules spotted in neighborhood, etc.

Sometimes if they are a bit tired out they have time to think about whether every single thing needs escalation; if they are satiated physically and mentally they are more likely to decide to maybe talk about it tomorrow.

One idea might be making a concerted effort to tire him out every single day. That might mean long walks (as long as you can manage, 1-2 miles if possible) in the AM and PM. 

Or (or if at all possible, AND) mentally stimulating games will tire a dog to a surprising degree. Clicker training them opens a lot of doors for behavior modification. 

Likewise, it's never too late to find and join a formal obedience class. For us the benefit of competition-style obedience was NOT competing or even stopping some specific behavior, but gaining the tools to meaningfully communicate with the dog on matters of "attention to me, please" and how to set them up to be rewarded for making good choices. We found the positive "ripple effect" was enormous. The Sits, Stays, Drop on Recalls etc were mostly ways to create achievable goals, add structure to the training, and focus on creating success rather than on behavior deficits that are more meaningful to us than the dog. 

Good luck!

[Belgrave]

Thank you so much! Yes general obedience training sounds a good call. As does clicker training… thank you