[Dailydrool] Solving Barking

[Dale Rutz]

Hi you guys,

About this I have a clue.  I've solved it.  3 or 4 or 5 or maybe 8 times by now, 
it's solveable, the barking.  But it takes forever and you need REALLY, REALLY 
good neighbors to do it.  I don't even know if I can do it anymore myself 
because my neighbor who helped me every single time so far went to the rainbow 
bridge a week ago Friday and she's the one who taught me how.

It started with Sugar Magnolia.  Sweet Maggie had been beat on and starved and 
tangled up in a chain and maimed as best as we could tell but we loved her no 
matter what and we got past all that.  She finally quit peeing everytime you 
moved fast or had the volume of your voice go up cause you got excited, even 
good excited, like somebody hit a home run.  But Sweet Maggie was such a good 
girl, she was worthanything and in the end she was perfect.  About the barking 
though ......

Sweet Maggie barked non stop from the moment we left the house to the moment we 
came home.  No rest, no pause, 8 to 10 hours straight.  Well, she'd whine part 
of the time when she was tired and out of breath from the barking.  Oh, and she 
chewed up everthing in the house too so we had to lock her out when we were 
gone.  We worked with the animal behaviorist from the Humane society, we prayed 
to G-d, we bought every gadget that's supposed to occupy them ..... nada.  And 
then our neighbor Jill stepped in ....

She told me she could fix Maggie and asked me if I wanted her to try.  When I 
left for work as soon as I put Maggie out Jill would go outside on the other 
side of the back fence and talk to Maggie.  She'd throw her little stuffed toys 
she bought her at the dollar store.  Or treats.  Talked to her.  Sang to her. 
 Off and on all day.  After a while Maggie calmed down and we unlocked the dog 
door when were were gone.  Maggie would get upset and run right out there to 
that back fence and scream for Jill, Jill would come out and talk to her and 
sing to her and Maggie would be fine.  And Maggie was just fine.

Every single dog I brought through here (foster or otherwise) went through the 
same thing.  LuLu took almost a YEAR .... but Jill was pretty sick by then. 
 Cyrus was a beast but she handled him.  I don't think they'd ever seen each 
other face to face in all those years but the halloween before last I was 
walking him with the girls trick or treating and we went past Jills place and 
she came out and called to my HUGE lab and he came over and she sat on the 
ground and that big boy sat down in her LAP and grinned like an idiot.

So, in a nut shell, best as I can tell, 

1)  the dog has been alone/ignored/sad and maybe for large quantities of time
2)  the dog likes it when you are around and not so much when you aren't
3)  if you have a really good neighbor to sympathize with the dog when you're 
gone over time they just kinda settle out of whatever it was made them bark like 
that.

Course, I'm clueless as always.  And I know I'll miss Jill.

More later from Dale, the ever clueless momPerson with 3 basset hounds who 
showed up and changed my life.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.dailydrool.org/pipermail/dailydrool-dailydrool.org/attachments/20130304/90cbb7ff/attachment.htm>