This 2021 blog post I wrote to elaborate on a 2017 quickie for clickertraining.com continues to be the most read thing on my website. (For the actual steps in the protocol, go to that post. Then come back and read this one.) And I get a lot of heartening messages about how it has helped people live more harmoniously with their dogs. But like most responsible content producers, I also worry a great deal about sending “recipes” out into the wild without enough context--be it through social media or presentations at conferences that are always shorter than I’d like. So here are some additional thoughts that have been percolating over the past couple years.
The number one thing people ask, with concern, about this protocol is: aren't you reinforcing barking? Initially yes. And, maybe forever. It should, however, be less barking, and less intense barking, and if you follow the protocol all the way through, you might get closer to none.
The number two thing people ask is "can I use it for x," and this is related to the number one thing. I think it's important to emphasize that this protocol is designed to address barking at stimuli that surprise both you and the dog, like stuff outside your window, in your apartment hallway, or outside a fence. If the things your dog barks at are not surprises, and you can see them coming and get ahead of barking consistently to reinforce something else, definitely do that instead. Leslie McDevitt's "Look at That" from Control Unleashed is great for this.
This protocol works best with initial preventive management, pretrained skills, and consistency. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to do any of those things if I don’t have to. To potentially save yourself some work, if you have a brand-new dog and they are barking at stuff outside the window or fence, or your dog just started barking at sounds when you moved . . . then if your neighbors won't murder you, try doing nothing about it for a week and seeing what happens before starting any other type of protocol. I gave this advice to trainer friend Christie Catan when she moved to the country and you can read about it here.
This protocol initially uses food (usually) to reinforce barking. Less barking, and then if carried out to completion, the reinforcer is used to select a different part of the chain that results. I don’t worry about reinforcing the barking, though, because if you are a place where you are really motivated to do something about the barking, the barking is occurring regularly, which means something is reinforcing it already. The reinforcer is probably the sound or sight going away, or possibly the way you react to the barking. These explanations need to be ruled out before deciding that the barking is “self-reinforcing" as I often hear people do.
Because something in the environment is reinforcing (which means "strengthening") the barking, preventive management is key. Without it, the behavior will continue to be reinforced, and you may find yourself weakening or poisoning the cue you are trying to train (read on). Your management may not be perfect, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of better. If you are not prepared to train, do your best to minimize exposure, and by extension, opportunities to keep getting reinforced by the environment for barking. Use window film or white noise, close blinds, close the back door, put slats through or tarp over the chain link fence, etc. You may find this solves your problem without further training, but maybe you also like to be able to look out the bottom half of the windows and still want to move ahead with some training.
This may sound similar to advice you have heard about training a recall--don't put yourself in a position where you'll need it if you don't think it will work, right? Well, a clean recall cue is the main prerequisite for this protocol. And “thank you” is that clean recall cue. It doesn’t have to be “thank you,” but most people have ruined their first recall cue already (by not reinforcing, reinforcing poorly, punishing late arrivals, only using it when it will cost the dog something to come, etc), and most people haven’t ever said “thank you” to their dog yet, so it usually has no prior associations. It also tends to work as a mindset changer for the humans; it’s hard to say in a mad tone. But you could use anything that is a 100% reliable predictor of stuff your dog loves--even, gasp, your marker signal. A marker is just a cue that means come get your reinforcer.
If your recall isn’t working yet and your management fails, go to your dog and deliver the treats anyway. Drop them, many of them, in a straight line to the ground right past her eyeball. (Don't try to shove them in the dog's mouth; dogs are often less likely to take them that way, and you may get bitten.) When I started this protocol with my own dog Pigeon, my recall cue was not working in this situation, and I hadn’t thought of retrraining a new one “thank you” yet. When she tore down our gangway to hurl herself snarling at the gate, I hustled after her and stood right behind her, gave the cue, and then fed handfuls of Stella and Chewy’s if she so much as gave me a dirty look. Now, I would feed regardless of whether I got the dirty look. After a few sessions, she was paying much more attention to me when I followed her, both her barking and her visible physiological reactions (e.g., piloerection) got less intense, and I was able to start successfully recalling her out of the barking from farther away.
As with any other recall, I don’t recommend adding punishment—intentional or inadvertent—after the "thank you," as you risk poisoning the cue. If your dog won't take the treats even at the location of barking and you absolutely must bring them away, do it—but then adjust your plan, including preventive management, so you are not routinely hauling them off by the collar after you have said “thank you,” which could turn “thank you” into signal for avoidance. If you think "thank you" won't work, don't say it before you go get them.
I like to have the treats (and any other reinforcers) that follow “thank you” come in a predictable location so that (a) you don’t have to have treats on or near you all the time and (b) the dog will anticipate the location and start heading there—but if that’s not practical, the location can just be you.
Reinforce the earliest response your dog has to the stimulus. Don’t wait for barking if you can catch the head swivel or ear flick toward the sound.
Don’t reinforce the same type of (same look, same sound, pointing in the same direction) barking if it is offered when there is no stimulus to bark at. I once met a dog who barked at people outside the window, but also appeared to have learned to go around barking at windows even with nothing outside in order to get his person to get his toys out of hiding. That’s the sort of problem you may create if you reinforce the barking when there is no stimulus outside.
If the dog really is barking at surprise stimuli to get treats, congratulations! Many people seem to be happy to just have a nice way to stop barking quickly, before the thing goes away, but to me the coolest part is that now you can use the treats to shape less barking and faster turning. With Pigeon, I had trained up a predictable pattern of start toward the fence, bark a few times--here's the recall!--then turn around and start looking for the treats. So I began to delay the recall until I saw that turn. She started to bark even less and turn faster—skipping ahead to the behavior closest to the reinforcer.
The other things that may be happening are that the aversiveness of the stimulus may be reduced through the pairing with food (which you may not see if you are also routinely hauling your dog away by the collar after the cue); that when the stimulus starts to go away even without the continued barking, it may reveal barking to be unnecessary to remove the stimulus; and that if your response was reinforcing barking, the dog now gets attention or treats from you for less barking or for other behaviors like turning.