heynow9016
New member
I wrote this post in response to another post asking for advice about a dog that keeps whining, and it grew into something I wanted to have its own post.
We adopted an old man who lived in a shelter his whole life, had a lot of separation anxiety and confinement anxiety. He would whine then bark then howl then start trying to escape his crate, he would just get himself too riled up. I think that after 6 months he started to figure out the routine and that we would always come back, and he gradually became less whiny until now he barely does it anymore. We tried all the usual stuff, gradually practicing leaving him alone for periods he could handle without whining and then praising him when we came back. That helped a lot. We gradually increased the time and I think that was a necessary first step. What finally led to a breakthrough (unless it was just coincidence and he was on the path to a breakthrough anyway) was I ecollar conditioned him for several weeks and then I started using the educator bark collar. After a few days of this he seemed to figure out that whining was undesirable and then he stopped doing that and then he wouldn't get himself all riled up trying to escape the crate anymore.
That being said, from what I've read dogs will just become confused and scared if they aren't very familiar with the relationship with their actions and the stimulation of an e collar, so you HAVE to have them e collar conditioned before using a bark collar. It stands to reason that a dog isn't going to know his vocalizations are bad things without some way to communicate that. And when your dog only does it when you've left the room or sent him outside, it's hard to personally issue corrections at the right time so he knows you're correcting him for the vocalization. I think that's where the bark collar saved us, it gave him a gentle correction (there are multiple settings on the device) whenever he would start whining so he figured out that he wasn't supposed to do that. But we spent a lot of time conditioning him to understand that he has the power to turn off the stimulation by doing what he's supposed to do, if we hadn't done that then I think he just would have whined then had the stimulation then got scared and whined and gotten more stimulation and so on.
Peter Caine, with all his eccentricities, honestly saved my dog Baron's life because he has so many videos that actually work. We bought Pat Miller's book and for the first week we had this dog we couldn't even get him to walk on a leash, couldn't work his anxiety out with exercise. No amount of hot dogs or bologna or chicken would get him to walk on a leash. He was a mess. We couldn't get him to go outside and go to the bathroom! You're not supposed to use any force after all!/s
Then I saw Peter's video and we worked it out in one session. It was crazy. I honestly think at this point that purely positive dog training culture is so harmful and causing so many dogs to die because their good-intentioned owners can't effectively train undesirable behaviors. He also has a lot of really helpful videos on separation anxiety, which was probably our biggest problem we had and it almost led to us having to take him back because the stress was too severe.
Peter Caine doesn't seem to feel like people are going to learn how to e collar condition their dogs with youtube videos, so I had find other videos for that.
We adopted an old man who lived in a shelter his whole life, had a lot of separation anxiety and confinement anxiety. He would whine then bark then howl then start trying to escape his crate, he would just get himself too riled up. I think that after 6 months he started to figure out the routine and that we would always come back, and he gradually became less whiny until now he barely does it anymore. We tried all the usual stuff, gradually practicing leaving him alone for periods he could handle without whining and then praising him when we came back. That helped a lot. We gradually increased the time and I think that was a necessary first step. What finally led to a breakthrough (unless it was just coincidence and he was on the path to a breakthrough anyway) was I ecollar conditioned him for several weeks and then I started using the educator bark collar. After a few days of this he seemed to figure out that whining was undesirable and then he stopped doing that and then he wouldn't get himself all riled up trying to escape the crate anymore.
That being said, from what I've read dogs will just become confused and scared if they aren't very familiar with the relationship with their actions and the stimulation of an e collar, so you HAVE to have them e collar conditioned before using a bark collar. It stands to reason that a dog isn't going to know his vocalizations are bad things without some way to communicate that. And when your dog only does it when you've left the room or sent him outside, it's hard to personally issue corrections at the right time so he knows you're correcting him for the vocalization. I think that's where the bark collar saved us, it gave him a gentle correction (there are multiple settings on the device) whenever he would start whining so he figured out that he wasn't supposed to do that. But we spent a lot of time conditioning him to understand that he has the power to turn off the stimulation by doing what he's supposed to do, if we hadn't done that then I think he just would have whined then had the stimulation then got scared and whined and gotten more stimulation and so on.
Peter Caine, with all his eccentricities, honestly saved my dog Baron's life because he has so many videos that actually work. We bought Pat Miller's book and for the first week we had this dog we couldn't even get him to walk on a leash, couldn't work his anxiety out with exercise. No amount of hot dogs or bologna or chicken would get him to walk on a leash. He was a mess. We couldn't get him to go outside and go to the bathroom! You're not supposed to use any force after all!/s
Then I saw Peter's video and we worked it out in one session. It was crazy. I honestly think at this point that purely positive dog training culture is so harmful and causing so many dogs to die because their good-intentioned owners can't effectively train undesirable behaviors. He also has a lot of really helpful videos on separation anxiety, which was probably our biggest problem we had and it almost led to us having to take him back because the stress was too severe.
Peter Caine doesn't seem to feel like people are going to learn how to e collar condition their dogs with youtube videos, so I had find other videos for that.