Barking

Sadie has always been a very quiet dog. Up until recently she almost never barked and now,it has begun. It seems mostly at night that,she thinks she hears someone coming through the back door and gets up and starts barking,growling walking to the bark door looking around,and the hair on her shoulders sticking up. Then she starts to calm down and will still snort and walk around looking at us,and then after about 5 minutes calms down completely and goes back to whatever. This has started up in the past..3 weeks or so I'd say. She's 7 and half months old and I don't know what I should do about her fear. Earlier we were watching tv and someone bust through a door on the tv and she thought it was someone in the house and immediately jumped up from napping and barked and ran to the back door. I've heard some people say to calm her down and let her know its OK,others say not to, that,that teaches them its ok to be scared. Needless to say her bark is very developed,very loud,deep,and we now know she would definitely intimidate any would be person actually there.

I'm probably wrong, but I'll get up to see what the dogs are barking at, calmly tell them they're good boys for sounding the alarm and then tell them it's okay. They usually follow me back to whatever room I was in and settle down.

Is this the watchdog side of labs?

I think it's the watchdog side of dogs. My chihuahua does the same thing.

I taught her the "quiet" cue. There are lots of threads here about how to teach it. Another thing to keep in mind is that if the barking makes you nervous - like, you think someone's actually there - she will pick up on it and it will make her anxiety worse. So TRY to stay very calm (easier said than done, sometimes), and the calmness will rub off on her as well.

This is true,because sometimes i'm not quite sure,especially when i'm by myself and she starts acting like that,because sometimes she will look out the window in front of the house and thats when i get nervous.

Don't know - all of my dogs are mixes without any Lab in them (that I can tell). Riley occasionally comes out with a pretty deep bark, so I have hope he's not going to sound like a soprano forever - yipping just isn't very intimidating.

The older dogs, Murphy and Mick (brothers), are good at sounding pretty fierce, but Riley tends to hang back - I think the boys intimidate him, too. I'm not worried about it, he's still a kid and I don't expect him to act like the adult dogs yet.

Sadie sounds like an 80 pound dog in her bark. I can only imagine how it'll sound as she gets older.

Maybe she can give Riley lessons so he doesn't sound like a complete wimp? :lol-sign:

Haha you may regret it,it scares the crap out of me sometimes