Dogs and House Guests

The one thing that you have to look forward to as a dog owner is how your dog will behave when you have guests over. Unless trained, most dogs will first bark when anyone gets close to the front door. Then once your guest knocks on the door it only intensifies. Then when your guest gets inside the door, there could be any number of reactions. Some dogs will bite. Nipping puppies are one thing, but a full grown dog biting is a big problem. There are ways to prevent your dog from doing these things. The barking when someone knocks on the door is not a bad thing. However, you need to train your dog to stop on command. Dogs are territorial, and trying to get them to stop barking entirely isn’t natural. For one thing, they need to bark if an intruder were to try to come in when you are unaware. If you wanted to have your stop barking entirely, there are some products that can help in that area like anti-barking collars. I don’t think that they are a good thing except for the worst cases. Even at that, the ones that shock are very controversial. The one way that I have found to be very effective is to put your dog in a crate like ‘time out’ when they bark at your guests or whatever. Give them around 5-10 minutes, then let them out. If they try again, put them back in the crate. If you keep up this process, it shouldn’t take too long before your dog stops their bad behavior. At first, you will want to try to get your dog to stop on command. When that fails, then you should use the crate. After a while, when your dog does stop on command, then you can reward them with a treat like these super stars.