How did you train your dog to be quiet?

I can’t. I’ve tried for years to get her to stop barking hysterically every time a person or a dog passes the house.

The only luck I have seemed to have had is in the past three months. When she goes apeshit, I put her outside so she can GO apeshit….then I won’t let her back in for 30 minutes. She’ll be apeshit for one minute, then spend 29 minutes at the door, begging to come in.
I make eye contact with her, then turn my back on her.
Somehow she seems to have made the connection. Her hysterical barking is down to about 1 every other day. It used to be at least 3 times a day.

Note: If it’s normal barking, I don’t punish her. If she asks to go outside, and barks a little, I don’t punish her for that either. She’s a DOG!
It’s the other….the hysterical barking that makes throw herself at the fence, screaming and screaming…...That she gets punished for.

You say two of your goats. I’m presuming that means you have more. I think those two may be leaders of the herd and it is part of their function to make sounds. I am by no means an expert but it seems to me that you need to find out more about the how your herd of goats functions before you start singling out individuals. What happens if you send these two off to the petting zoo and another two take over making those sounds for the herd?

Goats. Oh. Well. Nevermind my post!

My one dog hardly ever barks, but she did whine a lot as a pup. Since she wanted my attention, that is exactly what she got by being quiet…and her whining got ignored. That’s what you need to ask yourself – what do those goats want? Are they looking for your attention? Are they hungry? Bored? Reacting to some kind of trigger?

Clicker training does work if you want to get an animal to vocalize less. It is perfect for reactive dogs, but timing is crucial. You said,

“How are they supposed to know they are being treated for being silent rather than for finishing the bark?”

That’s just it – once the dog has barked, you’re over threshold. You’ve gone too far. I’m going to tell you what we did with Amy, my sister’s dog.

Amy used to bark at any dog she didn’t know. Her motivation was fear – she wanted the dogs gone. We went out with a clicker and a box of cut-up sausages. For about a week, we clicked as soon as Amy spotted another dog, before she had a chance to explode at him. We then showered her with treats until – this is vital – the other dog was gone. The treats were a nice distraction, but the vanishing dogs were what really got Amy’s attention. She’d glance around after eating the treats, looking for the threat. You could see the relief.

We were careful to cross the street and do U-turns so no dog could get too close. Amy blew up twice in that week, I think, when dogs caught us by surprise.

Very soon, we were able to make it harder. When Amy spotted a dog, we waited. She’s a very clicker-savvy dog, and she got what we were asking for pretty quickly – when we refused to click, she made eye contact. Jackpot…that’s what we were aiming for.

Now, dogs are Amy’s cue to look at us, and she hasn’t exploded for ages. She thinks she’s magic, wishing those dogs away.

So…that’s the trick. First, a light version of the trigger is presented, and the click follows immediately. You’re capturing that second of peace. Over time, you can then move on to shaping an incompatible alternative behaviour.

Put a bark collar on him.

@longgone Thanks for explaining the capture moment; the training method makes more sense now. They mostly yell for attention and because of boredom, I think. We finally got a goat playground up last month (empty cable spool, stumps, tractor tire), which helps some. More fencing helped too. Because of these changes things have gotten better since last summer, but they still walk around screaming sometimes even when they appear to have everything they could want in life. I suspect this is because of their previous housing arrangement from their previous owner: all barn, all the time – no pasture. So I think they might scream a lot now because it was their only outlet for a long time, and it became habit. Winter was especially difficult for them because they didn’t have the pasture, so we made goat puzzle toys (crumpled up milk cartons with grain inside), which help for about ten minutes. We figured lack of exercise was part of the problem and took them on walks when the snow melted enough, but as soon as green stuff started growing they stopped enjoying themselves (to all appearances) or letting us lead them for any distance – when the world is a buffet, it’s very difficult to interest them in taking a walk. They stop at the end of the lead; I lure them forward with a treat; they come and eat it and then stop again. There’s a way to sling a rope around their back legs to force them to keep moving, but they obviously do not enjoy this. Goat keeping friends tell me that to create a packgoat (which are wonderful – can carry ~50 lbs and eat along the trail, unlike all other pack animals which need food packed with their load) one must start with a young kid, and that it’s really hard to teach an adult to lead when it would rather be doing something else, like eating. But if you have any lead-training suggestions I would love to hear those as well.

Their triggers seem to be 1) seeing me or my fiance moving around inside the house, through the windows or outside their fence in the yard and 2) passing pedestrians and motorists. Desensitizing in the manner you describe to the cars and pedestrians seems pretty straightforward – have friends come by a lot and clicker-treat the goats before they start up yelling, like you said. But I’m having a hard time figuring out how I’d do it for us moving around outside their area, since as soon as we join them they are happy. Maybe a remote-controlled treat bin that I can open from a distance, or something else like that that doesn’t exist…? I know that it is anti-helpful to give them attention when they yell for it – and trust me, I have no particular wish to spend time with them after they have been so aggravating – but ignoring their demands for attention seems to do nothing – we can garden or just sit out there for hours and they will continue to scream at us through the fence.

@Cosmos Nope, goats do not make sounds for dominance reasons – they crash into each other with their heads to work that stuff out. The two in question are mother and daughter; mom is #2 in the herd and daughter is dead last because she’s the smallest. Taking them away would upset the rest of the herd, no doubt, but they’d settle down to normal within a few days. I saw it happen with the two herds my ladies came from.

@kritiper Their neck structure would not allow bark collars to work. I have read stories from goat owners who tried this and they just don’t work because the vocal cords are up top and the collars slide down. Otherwise I might consider trying the spray type.

I’ve heard somewhere that you can’t directly stop the barking by treating the barking itself. A dog barks because it has the mistaken belief that it is the alpha dog. As the alpha dog, it must alert others to dangers. If the dog recognizes someone else as the alpha dog, it will see a situation and look to see how the “leader” reacts to it. If the leader is calm and not acting nervous, the dog will remain nervous.

So.. according to these experts, the trick is getting the dog to recognize you as the leader. Apparently, it will feel more calm and less inclined to bark, as it doesn’t feel responsible for the safety of the group.

I’m no dog owner, so I may just be blowing smoke, but several people I know swear by this method. Brief article

Psssht. My Spaniel barks because she wishes she was the alpha dog! Not a chance, not while Dakota is around!

@wildpotato First off, I’m loving this exercise and the fact that you are putting so much effort into training your goats!

As to the boredom and your theory of yelling due to lack of stimulation – if we were talking about dogs, I would definitely agree with you. In dogs, barking releases endorphins, so barking is often a symptom of anxiety. Could the same be true for goats?

I know there are Kong toys which goats could use. They may give them a longer period of fun than the milk cartons. I found an annoying video. Here is the toy the goat in the video is using. It takes my dogs about thirty – forty minutes to empty one of them, depending on how big the treats are and which dog is doing the work.

We had a petting zoo at a school I went to, so I know what taking an unwilling goat on a walk feels like. You mention luring. I’m guessing that timing is your issue, here. There are different kinds of reinforcement. Things which an animal will enjoy without any training are called “primary reinforcers”. Examples are food, play, companionship, etc. It is possible to train using these, but…the brain reacts stronger to secondary reinforcers – that is, the promise of good things to come. This is why clicker training works so well – it promises treats, and our brains go nuts.

In leash training your goats, the secondary reinforcers are working against you. Goat stops, you wave a carrot to lure her forward…you have just reinforced the stopping, because that’s when you gave the promise of food. Instead, try giving that promise while your goat is walking nicely. A clicker would work perfectly, here, and it would also make sense to use the environment as a reward. So, how about having some designated grazing spots along the walk, or a patch of extra-tasty stuff planted somewhere as a goal?

Why did the fencing help? Are the goats more sheltered now, less triggers to yell at? That’s something to think about: Can you block their view of your windows, for example? Sometimes, less input is all it takes.

So, they are yelling for attention – when do they stop? Do they want you in their area, and yell for you to come? Do you need to be touching them? Would they be interested in food as a reward at that moment?

If you think about it, the clicker is your remote-controlled reward. If it’s conditioned right, your goats are feeling happy as soon as they hear the click, and they’re brains get the message of, “Yep, right thing to do” in that exact moment. So, you can probably work this out.

One last question: Do both of them yell at the same time, or is one starting and the other joining in?

@keobooks No, dogs do not bark because they believe they are alpha dogs. In fact, there are no alpha dogs, because dogs are not even pack animals. I’m going to comment on your source, as its content could be dangerous for first-time dog owners:

“In a natural state, dogs would live their entire lives within the closely structure social order of their pack.”

In a natural state, dogs would scavenge near humans, individually or with a partner.

“Always praise your dog as if you own it. Put your hands firmly on the dog. Hug the dog.”

To a dog, a hug is something to endure because humans like it. Dogs do not typically see hugs as praise. That’s why so many bites happen when children try to hug the family dog.

“Hands on may mean a collar shake, a leash correction, a surprising assist into a sit or down.”

In other words, pain. A dog’s skin around his neck is incredibly thin, and his larnyx is just as sensitive as ours. Yes, leash jerks hurt. Anyone arguing against that is kidding themselves. A “surprising assist into a sit” is an excellent way to make your dog hand-shy.

“For particularly dominant dogs, make it a down-stay, and even more submissive position.”

There is no such thing as putting a dog into a submissive position. Submissive positions are assumed, voluntarily. If they are forced, they’re meaningless. No matter what Cesar Millan wants us to believe: Wolves to not throw each other on their backs for disobeying.

Barking is most likely to be motivated by fear, boredom or frustration, in my opinion. There are many more reasons why a dog might bark, too many to list – but those three are the ones I see and hear about most often.

@wildpotato It’s a electronic collar that delivers a mild shock when it “hears” the dog bark. It has nothing to do with the actual vocal chords.

^ I’m sure you know that shock and spray collars carry the big risk of animals associating the pain/shock with anything but their behaviour? I think @wildpotato is wise in not considering them.

I also happen to think punishing animals for perfectly normal behaviour is unfair and abusive, but the ineffectiveness makes using those collars even more illogical.

So things are going much better. I realized that part of the problem was my tendency to pay any attention to the goats while outside and not dealing directly with them. I stopped talking to or even looking at them when they were yelling and started spending more time just sitting around outside, relaxing or reading instead of gardening or doing chores. They got bored of watching me do nothing, I guess, and have started going off and doing their own thing, like normal goats, rather than focussing obsessively on me. Two issues still remain:

They yell constantly while I move fences, probably with excitement and impatience at getting the new pasture. And they yell while I am getting their grain ready (they loooove grain). I am not sure how to avoid reinforcing this bad behavior, since at the end of both these events they end up getting what they want because, you know, they have to be fed/let out to the new pasture. I’ve tried getting the grain all ready without them knowing, but they can hear grain hitting the feeding bins even if I do everything inside the house with the door closed. Got any suggestions? How do dog trainers/owners deal with barking during feeding time? I’ve had stoic northern spitz-type dogs who rarely vocalize my whole life, so that’s why I’m at such a loss when it comes to this issue.

Congrats, glad to hear it!

Both those issues can be solved as well, I’d guess, but you might have to do a bit of running around: When dogs bark at the idea of getting dinner or going for a walk, the trick is removing the expectation. So, fifty times a day, an owner of such a dog may pick up the leash, put on her coat – and go back to watching TV. This makes some dogs go crazy, the first few times it is done. At some point, though, they start to look for other, more reliable cues. They wait until dinner is a sure thing, and the preparation becomes meaningless.

With your goats, you could let that grain hit the bins throughout the day. If they are only reacting to the sound, you can use a recording device and play the sound back to them at irregular intervals. Ideally, you will find a brief moment of peace which you can then use to feed them. If at all possible, it may be smart to keep ready-made portions of grain right beside the goats, so you won’t mess up your timing.

It can be helpful to offer a reliable cue which your goats are allowed to yell about. You could use a special word or noise, and teach them that all sounds of grain are meaningless unless they’re accompanied by a certain bell.

Good luck!