Bad owners, not bad dogs…

The  new trend of  essentially slashing your dog’s vocal cords to muffle their barking is not just cruel,  it does nothing other than lower the volume of the barks and change their character.

Dogs communicate by barking   I should know  —  Big Girl is part Great Pyrenees and they are prodigious barkers,  because they want to scare predators away so they don’t have to go kill them.  That is what they’re bred for and they will take on anything from a coyote to a bear.  BG is a guard dog and while she barks more than the other dogs I’ve had over the years,  she has a variety of different barks which tell me if it’s a warning to a critter to stay out of her territory or a threat from a predator.

She has warned me of a poisonous snake on my patio and then intelligently stayed close at hand but out of my way while I dealt with it.  I feel quite safe with BG because her territory extends to anything she can see, hear or smell,  and she has a good enough nose to be a tracker.   If your dog barks excessively,  it finds too many threats,  is bored,  or is anxious.   It’s your job as its owner to address the underlying problems in the dog’s environment,  and its reactions to them.  The first few weeks I had BG,  if she barked for more than a minute,  I’d simply go out to her and ask what she was barking at.   I let her see I wasn’t worried about whatever it was,  so she didn’t need to be either.  Yelling at a barking dog is usually taken by the dog to mean you are backing it up,  so you get more barking.

Get professional assistance if you can’t figure it out yourself.  But don’t encourage this horrible practice among veterinarians.  If you resort to it,  it means you are a failed dog owner and shouldn’t be allowed to have so much as a pet roach.