One of my first bird dogs was a barker and I had to sell it because it kept a neighbor awake. He would call me in the middle of the night to tell me my dog was barking. That kept both of us awake.
I tried a lot of things over the years for barking dogs. but most of them didn’t work. Usually dogs bark from boredom, because another dog is barking, or they want to see you. I’ve tried spraying them with water, yelling at them and throwing things but nothing worked. Now, you can use bark collars but this was long before bark collars.
Finally, I hit upon the idea of grabbing something, it doesn’t matter what, and beating on the kennel, screaming and hollering. The dog wants to see you, but he doesn’t want to see you when you’re crazy.
I usually have several dogs in my kennel at a time, I have 6 runs, and it’s not hard to tell the offending party. After you get them used to this, the one doing the barking will be cowering down while the other dogs will look like they are saying, “see I told you he would come down here, and he will be crazy.”
Not long after I moved here, one of my dogs started barking in the middle of the night. When I was young barking dogs didn’t bother me but now just about any noise does, so I got up and yelled at him. He quit but before I went back to sleep he started again, so I got back up went to the back door and yelled again. He quit but started again before I got back in bed.
As I got dressed I looked at the clock and it was past 2:00 am. I was pretty angry when I looked for something to beat on the chain link kennel with. The only thing I found was a dust mop, but all I wanted was something that would make noise. When I got outside, it was a beautiful night. The moon was full and all most as bright as day. This didn’t register at the time, I was still angry.
My kennels are about 100 yards behind the house and as I march down I swing my arms in an angry manner. I want the dogs to know that they are in trouble. When I get there it’s a male dog, inside his house, still barking. Him still barking may have increased my anger a little. I started yelling and hit the kennel with the dust mop and the head of the dust mop seemed to come off and go through the chain link. It flew to the other end of the kennel, turned and started back toward me. When it got to the end I had beat on, it jumped up and came over the 6 foot chain link.
When I hit that chain link at 2:00 am, still half asleep, my mind wasn’t working very well. What really happened, was a bob cat had climbed into the kennel and was eating from the dogs self feeder. When I came down, it had crouched down right where I hit the chain link with the dust mop. That sent it to the other end then he came back and jumped the fence. Each run in my kennel is only 6 feet wide so the bob cat was real close when he left. My brave male dog was barking from inside his house.
Now I have bark collars but the dogs can’t wear them all of the time, so beating on the kennel and yelling still works most of the time. I have learned that, sometimes birds flush on their on and dogs bark for a reason.