Wow, I could not believe my ears when I arrived at my most recent appointment with these girls and their human dad.
Normally I would hear their resounding barking as I was walking down the driveway. But on this day, I got to the door and rang the doorbell hearing nothing but the sound of distant cars on a nearby street. I wondered if the doorbell was working, so I tried again. There was still silence from inside the house.
I knew my client was home as I had texted him from my car so I slowly and carefully began opening the front door. That’s when I heard Brian call to me, “Come in.” “Did the doorbell work?,” I asked. He assured me it did.
What I saw next was the most wonderful sight. There, through the living room, dining room and in the kitchen were Caddie and Poppy laying with relaxed body muscles on their beds. Brian gave each one a treat as I approached. The two dogs who, at every other visit, greeted me with more barking (Poppy would jump on me while Caddie would bark and move a step away initially) continued to lay their as I walked toward them. When they did finally get up, they both approached me with loose muscles and took treats with very soft mouths.
THIS was the work of a family who was very committed to solving their issue of the dogs barking incessantly at the doorbell, visitors, and even passers-by.
I thought I’d share some of what we did to get to that point as it is a fairly common issue.
The first step was taking a closer look at the behavior, what environmental factors were influencing the rate and strength of the behavior including the antecedents and consequences, and what strategies could be tried to modify the behavior.
The target behavior was Caddie and Poppy’s high-pitched barking that would begin sometimes even when they could hear or see (through the window) someone approaching, but definitely once the doorbell rang and then continuing to bark when visitors entered the home. Once inside, the two dog’s responses were different. Poppy would wag her tail while bumping or even jumping on guests; while Caddie would bark and move backwards.
So, the immediate antecedents (setting events for the behavior to occur) for the barking to begin was seeing/hearing someone walk to the door and/or the doorbell ringing. A distant antecedent was their access to the front window and door where they reacted by erupting into barking intermittently throughout every day, some more than others. Trigger stacking occurs when numerous stress inducing stimulus occur simultaneously or within a relatively short period of time, and thus collectively decrease an animal’s coping tolerance. This was most definitely happening with these dogs.
Additionally, we know that past consequences of behavior have a lot to do with the future rate of the behavior. If a consequence works to get an animal something of value, then the rate of that behavior will increase. In this case, the sight/sounds of people coming to the door meant different things to each dog. To Caddie, it meant closer proximity to someone with whom she was uncomfortable while to Poppy, it meant closer proximity to someone she did want to meet.
(So Caddie’s barking/backing up behavior also served to give her more distance from the person who just entered the house.)
A multi-tiered approach needed to be put into place to help solve the problem.
- Eliminated access to the front windows. When the family was away, the dogs were kept in the kitchen area so that they could not see stimulus outside to react to. This step alone really helped the dogs to relax as they were not experiencing the daily trigger stacking effect from the environment.
- Teach them a different response (conditioned emotional response) to hearing the doorbell. For doing this, I recorded the sound of their doorbell on my phone (and sent it to them) and we began practicing playing the sound first a low level, then following that immediately with treat tosses. With lots and lots of practice, slowing raising the volume as the dogs were hearing the sound and, with relaxed muscles, looking for food. The family also practiced this when the dogs did not expect it. Meanwhile, they avoided having people ring their door bell so this could be very controlled.
- Just desensitizing them to the sound however was not enough, as the sound was associated with people walking through it. We decided to teach the dogs to go to their beds – which were moved to the kitchen (two rooms away from the door and away from incoming visitors) when the doorbell rang. Going to their beds and relaxing on their beds were then also behaviors that needed to be taught separate from the doorbell before putting them together.
- A fourth step would be to then work on teaching the dogs (especially Caddie) a positive association with visitors in the house.
As it turned out, the dogs not having access to the front windows had such a big impact on their mental state that when I approached the kitchen where they were laying in their beds, they got up with relaxed muscles and came to me with no barking. This was especially huge for Caddie who would have barked and backed up.
There is still work to be done but how very proud I am of what they have accomplished. Just huge!
