Category: Common Problems ¤
  Author: Shirley Chong ¤
   Title: Using a Conditioned Negative Punisher to Stop Barking ¤

   Jean Sweezie asks:

<quote>
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to teach a dog NOT to bark to 
come in from the backyard.  My american cocker, Katie, sweet thing 
that she is, has decided to start barking when she wants to come in, 
and stands wherever she happens to be in the yard when the thought 
strikes her, which means she is often very close to the neighbours.
<end quote>

   I'm really surprised about suggestions that incorporate punishment 
for a problem like this, because the dog is handing you their 
motivator on a silver platter!
   Katie barks BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO COME IN. She's using barking as a 
means to manipulate you into providing what she wants--to come in. 
The barking is not self-reinforcing for this dog--it's only the means 
she is using to signal to you that she wants to be with you. She 
barks from anywhere in the yard because YOU have inadvertantly 
trained her that way!!! IMHO, punishing Katie for something you have 
trained her to do is unfair to the highest degree.
   Okay. Now what do YOU want? For Katie not to bark. What does Katie 
want? To come in when she's ready to (which is perfectly reasonable 
to me, BTW). 
   There IS a good compromise for this situation! They are called 
jingle bells and you hang them on the outside doorknob when Katie 
goes outside. You use the clicker to teach Katie to ring the 
doorbells. First both of you are outside and you use food treats to 
get her to give those bells a good jingle (not food on the bells 
themselves, just food as the treat part of C/T). When she can jingle 
them, you step inside the door and tease her with the food. If you 
have to, you can give her a big hint by opening the door just enough 
so you can slip your hand out and point to the jingle bells. You 
proceed to shape Katie to jingle the bells when she can see you 
standing inside, pretty much the same as you did while standing 
outside. But with one difference--now her reinforcer is coming in the 
house. She jingles, you open the door and hug and kiss her as if you 
hadn't seen her in a month. Then you pop her back outside!
   You may run into a situation where she barks, then runs up and 
jingles the bells. You may have created a behaviour chain that looks 
like this: bark, run to door, ring bells. If you don't reinforce the 
bark part of the chain it will fade on it's own. But if you simply 
CANNOT allow the barking to extinguish on it's own, you can speed it 
on it's way by teaching Katie a Conditioned Negative Punisher (CNP). 
A CNP is like an anti-clicker, it's an otherwise neutral signal that 
means "the treat ISN'T going to come up." 
   This is part of the post I wrote to Bego Aguilera yesterday. What 
I forgot to mention (I hope you're reading, Bego! <G>) is that in my 
experience, it can take longer to condition a CNP with a crossover 
dog. IMHO this is because crossover dogs already have a history of 
punishment or withdrawn reinforcers and it takes longer for them to 
realize you are creating a signal for it.
   So when you hear Katie bark, you stick your hand out the door and 
use the CNP to let her know you're not going to reinforce barking. 
Then you pull your hand back in and wait to see if it occurs to her 
to try the bells. You may have to help her figure it out (stick your 
hand out the door and point at the bells, jiggle them a bit, 
whatever).
   Katie is a dog that wants something and figured out one successful 
strategy to get it. If you provide her with a different strategy for 
success, she'll use it.

M. Shirley Chong
The Well Mannered Dog