When we adopted our Jack Russel Terrier, she ran along the fence line and barked with the dog next door. Not fun when she races and you can’t catch her! We asked our newly found trainer from K9 Solutions and she told me to put Sophie on a leash. Bring her to a prominent spot at the fence where the neighbor dog would bark. Place Sophie in a sit/stay and feed her little treats, every 15 seconds or so. Giving her verbal encouragement the whole time. Do this a couple times a day until she stops when I tell her and comes to me when I call her.
Note that the treats you feed your dog need to be just that – treats. Not an item you would feed your dog for simply being cute (though, most of the time they are, right?!) but something special. I associate a certain treat to a certain task. I’ll get more into that at a later time. But make sure the treat for THIS task is the same each time and not something they usually receive.
Back to the fence training. It sounded easy, but it was nerve-wracking. Day after day I saw no improvement. Feeding my dog treats as she was quiet and listened to me while on a leash, yet each time she went outside without a leash she ran along the fence and barked and barked . . . and ignored me. But, about a week later, the neighbor dog barked at her and Sophie totally ignored her! Oh, there were set backs and many verbal reminders. But after a couple of weeks of keeping on her each time she thought about barking and running, the neighbor dog realized it was no longer fun to run and bark alone so he kind of stopped.
I am amazed at how trainable dogs are. We humans simply need to be trained ourselves!