Barkin‘ dog … „Big Deal, huh?“ you may think … yet, it was the most difficult command to teach …
How do you teach a silent, quiet dog „bark!“? Ninja never barks, never howls … it is almost as if he was mute. Just now and then when I command him to go „back!“ more than a few times in a row, he ‚complains‘ with something that resembles a woof.
I have used the past weeks‘ evening exercise to have Ninja walk backwards until he let out his ‚complain‘ … (you can see this int he first 20 seconds of the video) and rewarded him with a „YES!“ …
Sadly, after 2 or 3 barks he stops the woofing altogether … It was just the day before this video was taken that he realized what I wanted him to do … ofc it is not perfect, yet … but he knows the trick and simply requires more repetitions!
Also you can notice that he has still the tendency to go backwards, on „bark“ („Bell!“ in German) … This requires some fine tuning …. and the worse part is to unteach him to bark on „go back!“ 😀
I am so happy that he managed to learn the command at all. The irony … other people want their dogs to be quiet and I teach mine to bark 😀
