Do you understand woof woof?

“Now silence! Psst! Except! Silence! It’s over!” After the doorbell rings, the dog owner yells. The dog is running outside the front door barking wildly, you can’t hear anything over the noise. This mood means that the dog is more alert and defensive, as people often want to “stop” the barking dog in such situations with a loud and aggressive tone of voice. From the dog’s point of view, humans have a real problem because they’re acting so overly excited that the dog barks more and more loudly and almost barks.

People talk, dogs bark

Barking is not fundamentally a behavioral disorder, but it can become destructive behavior. Barking always denotes an emotional state. Behavioral scientists have found that because of their adaptive similarity, dogs refine barking as a channel of communication with us humans. People talk, dogs make noises. A series of tests with children over the age of six showed that children this age could emotionally understand a dog’s barking at the tape. People who were born blind had similar outcomes to those who could see. Barking is common in dogs living with humans. However, it is rarely seen in stray and wild dogs.

The acoustic structure of the dog bark reflects its internal state. For example, dogs kept in isolation will have higher-pitched tones than a dog barking at the doorbell. Typical traits of the breed are also clearly recorded in barking behavior.

Between danger and fear

When dogs need to be left alone and they can’t yet, they look for a familiar companion. This call is quite frequent, monotonous and persistent, and can degenerate into howling. When danger threatens, dogs call for help. The tone is alert, short and sharp. In anticipation or joy, barking very often, in rapid succession in series. The same barking pattern can be heard in the gaze of other dogs.

If dogs are duly overwhelmed by certain environmental influences or the living conditions of their daily lives, they are under chronic stress, which is reflected in excited barking as a response. Fear barking sounds hysterical, you can feel the fear echoing in the tone.

Alert and persistent

If you choose a breed with genetically stable traits such as alertness, territoriality, high excitability, stubbornness, and even independence, you can expect barking to become a part of everyday life.

Dogs that migrate and suddenly find themselves in an alien world can seem very reserved and patient at first. New impressions, constant sensory overload, being unable to move on your own because you are on a leash, unfamiliar sounds and foreign language, fear-inducing bad experiences can become a barking problem for possessed dogs.

Health reasons, often genetic, also encourage unsafe barking. Quite a few dogs suffer from visual impairments or are deaf without the owner noticing it right away. Such limitations can manifest in increased barking when something still unrecognizable appears in the distance. Or, when dogs cannot detect certain sound frequencies, they become afraid and the event suddenly comes to them.

As dogs age, some of their senses also deteriorate. When older dogs bark later, they can no longer hear themselves, so they bark louder or higher. Even hard of hearing people speak louder.

Genetics cannot be inherited

Barking is a part of communication for dogs, like meowing for cats, neighing for horses, and belching for cows. The idea of ​​wanting to remove said animals from their vocalizations would hardly have occurred to anyone, it just seems different with dogs. Barking becomes annoying or dogs are called “barkers”. This is very unfair, because dogs developed their barking sound when living with humans and: People consciously and willingly chose the dog for this.

Dogs generally do not bark when talking to each other. This form of communication is the expression of saying something to people. In today’s environment, people’s demands have changed significantly. Dogs are expected to be as calm, compliant, and inconspicuous as possible. If you are looking for a breed, you should definitely pay attention to the original post so that you know what to expect.

Genetics cannot be inherited. For example, if the ringing of the pack was gratefully placed in the past and was later followed on horseback, the same breed is still noisy today, even without a pack. Even today, guards large and small kept in courtyards to bark the alarm when strangers appear will reliably demonstrate this legacy. Many were supposed to distrust strangers, and that hasn’t changed to this day. Dogs had “work” to do, humans used and built skills that allowed them to survive better. Dogs today are still doing their genetically fixed job, only humans and the environment have changed.

fear and insecurity

It is important to know your dog well. As we know, there is always an emotion behind the voiceover. We need to find which ones and then think about what the dog is trying to tell us. Human assistance is necessary as dogs primarily communicate with their humans by barking. It can also be assumed that dog owners know that barking is natural and are allowed to explain it to their environment. Ignorant people already consider a barking dog dangerous, it doesn’t have to be.

For whatever reason, there is often fear or uncertainty behind barking. Fear cannot be ignored or punished. It’s not his fault that the dog is afraid, and it’s not up to us to decide whether it’s allowed to be afraid. In order for dogs to take us seriously in our protective role, we need to offer help and build trust. This means that if we want the dog to stop barking and tell him so in a friendly way, he can count on us to take on the task and take care of things ourselves.

Ingrid Blum graduated international dog trainer according to T. Rugaas, dipl. The animal psychology consultant specializes in dog language and behavior with the IET and his own dog school, www.hundeschule-fee.ch.