yellow lab problems

[quadfreakz400]

alright here's the problem...my brothers dog used to be a very well trained dog... they my brother graduated and moved to a place that didn't allow pets so he left the dog at our parents for a year and a half. now i have a place to keep pets so i took the dog off of my parents hands...but being spoiled by the parents and living inside their house she has become very spoiled and now i keep her outside and she barks constantly. how can i get her to stop barking

 

[noodlerubyallie]

Let her live with her people, inside the house, where she belongs.

 

[lizzybeth727]

Let her live with her people, inside the house, where she belongs.

I'd have to agree. Labs are extremely people oriented in the first place; then to take a dog that's used to living in the comforts of a house, and just leaving her outside all the time, would be a huge shock for her. She's barking because she's frustrated and lonely.

As far as the training, just because the dog is trained for one person doesn't mean he'll behave the same way for everybody. The service dogs I train work very well for me, but the recipients have to go through a lengthy training process to learn how to train their new dogs. So I'd suggest taking a training class with the new dog, so that you can learn how to handle her in the house and will start to bond with her a little more through training.

 

[Doberluv]

I agree with the advice already given. Dogs need to be with their family and need training....nice, gentle and effective training, techniques of which you can find here on the forum and/or through a positive reinforcement trainer, books, articles etc.

 

[quadfreakz400]

for the first 2 years of her life she was an outside dog and then she was inside for around 1 and a halfish....so there is no way to get her used to being outside again??? she won't just eventually get used to it??? i'd love to be able to keep her inside but my landlords won't allow it and my parents said they just can't do it anymore.

 

[Kat09Tails]

Well there are a couple different strategies to take. One is to identify what on earth is making her bark and eliminate it. This is not very effective because you can't control the universe. The second is to occupy her brain with something like a kong, etc. IMO this is a pretty expensive inefficient way to go about it. The final way is designated SHUT UP! time where you use a bark collar. I like the tritronics bark limiter and do use it on my lab who liked to bark at night (she sleeps outside in her kennel) bugging my elderly neighbor but I know a fair number of people like those citronella things.

To be fair though you can't expect the dog to sit outside all day and night bored out of it's mind and lonely. You need to spend time with the dog, give it adequate exercise, and mental stimulation. A dog needs direction.

I know in an ideal world the dog is 100% with people all the time in the house etc. However, there is no reason a dog can't spend the majority of its day outside if the neighborhood is safe and the yard is escape proof. Reality is in my family my dogs are the first ones to spend the majority of their days inside with me. Prior to this generation all dogs in my father's family, and my great grandfather's family were outside 100% of the time. A dog simply wasn't allowed in the house until about 1985 when we got our first cocker spaniel and even then, she was outside at night and when we weren't home.

 

[lizzybeth727]

For a dog that's raised outside and has never lived inside, she doesn't know what she's missing.

But if you take that same dog and bring it in the house for over a year, where she gets to be around her family the majority of the day and night, gets to sleep in a climate-controlled room, and doesn't have to worry about keeping strangers and other animals off her property; and then make that dog live outside again, then yeah, it would definately be a shock and lead to stress and frustration.

Stress and frustration lead to barking; your dog is barking because she's stressed and frustrated about living outside. Putting a bark collar on her will only raise her stress and frustration levels. While it may stop her from barking, it will also lead to other stress related behaviors, such as digging, climbing out of the yard, aggression at the fence, etc. There are a lot of dogs and situations where bark collars are a good choice, but I strongly argue that this is NOT one of those situations.

Maybe instead of having the dog live outside with you, you could work with your parents to figure out how to make their lives easier with the dog. Maybe this means taking the dog to training classes, taking her out for a run a few times a week, helping them work on crate training or other housemanners the dog might be lacking in, etc.