Obedience training is a difficult thing, both for the puppy and the people. We are currently teaching Seifer not to bark. Ansen found a website devoted to training dogs not to bark. Go figure there would be a whole website devoted to it. Anyways, we have to associate barking with something unpleasant, aka a squirt from the water bottle. I know cats don’t like water, but I think Seifer rivals even the cats. He hates being wet. So far, we’re curbing the barking, but he hasn’t stopped altogether. The problem is consistency. We have to assault him with the water every single time he barks and within seconds so that he associates the barking with the water. I have to say, it’s difficult. I often forget. Or I’ve learned to ignore it because it’s so normal, and then I don’t think about it. But maybe if we keep it up we can start fixing his bad habits, one by one. Someday he will be a good dog.
