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DGpuppyMum

DGpuppyMum

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I have a 16 week old puppy who has moments where she is just barking like crazy at me or my husband. We have tried to ignore her, we have tried separation for a minute but she just doesn’t stop. This can go on and off for over an hour. I am at my wits end. Can anyone help please
 
Hi...what breed is your pup?
 
At 16 weeks your puppy is still very young. Can you give more details about your life style, and how your puppy spends her days and nights and how she is getting on with general training ?
The more information you give the more likely there will be someone here who can give you some help. :rolleyes:
 
excuseme said:
At 16 weeks your puppy is still very young. Can you give more details about your life style, and how your puppy spends her days and nights and how she is getting on with general training ?
The more information you give the more likely there will be someone here who can give you some help. :rolleyes:
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I work for a few hours in the morning so it’s mostly me home. She is walked first thing and again when I get home before lunch, again in the afternoon/evening and again before we go to bed. She is mostly house trained. We are able to take her off the lead and have her play fetch when on our local field. We are attended no puppy classes but they could not give me a good answer to this problem. She is feed three times a day at present with a high quality food. Most of the time she is settled. But these outbursts are at unexpected times. She does them even after eating, being walked and toileting. We constantly ensure she has water.
 
DGpuppyMum said:
I work for a few hours in the morning so it’s mostly me home. She is walked first thing and again when I get home before lunch, again in the afternoon/evening and again before we go to bed. She is mostly house trained. We are able to take her off the lead and have her play fetch when on our local field. We are attended no puppy classes but they could not give me a good answer to this problem. She is feed three times a day at present with a high quality food. Most of the time she is settled. But these outbursts are at unexpected times. She does them even after eating, being walked and toileting. We constantly ensure she has water.
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Ahhh….that sounds to me like 'zoomies'...they go big crazy..well..'zoomies' actually is when they run around like headless chickens. I call all that energy same...mine do that too...when they've had a poo...they've eaten..after wash..'or what ever'. They will grow out of it, but barking is something you don't want to become as a habit.
Rather than ignore it...try get her excited playing with toy with you. You need to distract her from barking to get excited with something else. Pups have SO MUCH energy to spend and it has to come out of one way or other. In litter they play often quite rough to spend that energy, but when they are with us 'boring' humans...if they have to channel it out some other ways. To me sounds like she has learned to do it by barking.
Try making noise with loud squeeky toy, first to get her attention and then make to forget what she was doing.
When she start...give first firm NO. And then talk excitedly what you are going to get to her and then you might have behind your back..making toy noises.
 
In time (I think she is too young for this) you may need to teach her she has an off switch, and also some impulse control - I will link a couple of videos. For now, I think management might be the best option. Give her something like a Kong with a frozen filling (veg, wet dog food, some yoghurt, peanut butter - loads of suggestions online) which will occupy her and it's also quite a calming activity. Maybe try to do it before she starts up, if you recognise that it's about to happen, so she doesn't get to practice this annoying behaviour in the first place.


 
Never too young to teach impulse control, IMO, as long as you go at the pup's pace and remember she has the attention span of a gnat. Given her breeding, she's not just a box of frogs, but a box of clever, sensitive frogs... I'd also do plenty of 'brain games' that will get her thinking (e.g. hide and seek) - there will be lots of suggestions on the net.
 
My feeling is, at 16 weeks, she is having an awful lot of stimulation, she may not be mentally able to cope with. My feeling is that the non-stop barking is a form of displacement behaviour. So, rather than having a cigarette, or glass of wine, as a human might, to relieve stress, she barks. I’d also be concerned about the physical activity she is undertaking at 4 months. For example, some agility trainers will take puppies from 9 months onward, and they can learn the basic commands, eg., back, right, go, through, in, heel, side, walk it, but they are very careful about any physical activity the youngsters are asked to do. Jump heights are basically non-existent, they learn about contacts by running along planks on the ground.

With sighthounds (lurchers) too, often their “long leg bones” take over a year to mature, whereas small dogs can be fully mature at 10 months. We didn’t have our rescue lurcher neutered until about 14 months because loss of sex hormones before the dog is fully mature can apparently affect growth.

Sighthound/collie can be quite a complicated mix. You can end up with a very fast chaser with a lot of intelligence. Having had a sighthound with that combination of brains and speed, probably whippet/terrier, I’d veer more towards brain exercise than running/chasing games. We ended up doing agility, which gave her the best of both worlds. Running about is not something you want to encourage without good control, unless you’re happy to trek a couple of hundred yards to fetch your dog back from causing havoc trying to encourage other dogs to be the chasee. I learned this the hard way!!!

sighthounds are great dogs, and she looks gorgeous! <3
 
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You might find she’ll respond really well to clicker training, which is a great way of bonding with your dog. :)
 
Do you know what cross the dad was? (All lurchers are crosses.) Saluki crosses can have a tendency to bark for attention/to get you to play, though I'm not seeing saluki in your avatar pic.
 
JudyN said:
Do you know what cross the dad was? (All lurchers are crosses.) Saluki crosses can have a tendency to bark for attention/to get you to play, though I'm not seeing saluki in your avatar pic.
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That was gonna be my next question Judy N . Beautiful looking dogs them salukis but can't half be highly strung. I too can't see any saluki in her from the pic.
 
I think most saluki crosses seem to have the “saluki ears”, a bit like a lot of Beddie crosses having the lovely Beddie coat texture. Will be fun to watch her grow and develop into a beautiful sighthound. I’m jealous! <3
 
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