Why do so many dog owners allow their dogs to incessantly bark?

I have concluded that some people just do not hear barking. I cannot tolerate barky dogs. None of my dogs bark except to alert to someone coming up to the house (which I want).

It is true that some breeds are prone to barking more than others, but most breeds can be trained not to bark.

Your answer is likely to be as diverse as the number of owners who let their dogs bark. Some might be hard of hearing, while others are absent or have good insulation and or loud music. I suppose that other dogs are kept as guard dogs, and that the owner desires the behavior. Others simply might tune it out because they don’t care. It’s also extremely unlikely (although possible) that an owner of an incessantly barking dog would even bother to answer here.

I think some dog owners just become immune to their dogs barking.

I am very lucky that my current rural neighborhood has no problem dogs.

My one neighbor up the hill from the back of my property has a Westie, Corgi & Scotty dog that they keep indoors a lot and I rarely hear them barking.

My end of the road neighbor has an ancient lab that occasionaly wanders over to crap in my yard but it is rare. lol

My corner neighbors have 2 young labs that very occasionally escape there 10 fenced acres and come down the road to eat the cat food in my garage.

Everyone is also well aware that I have geese I love and if there was ever an incident, well, it wouldn’t be a happy situation.

But…no discernable barking problems.

I HATE barking dogs, nothing worse than trying to sleep with yapping canines. Grrrr!

Why do some people let their children scream incessantly and run around restaurants bothering people?

Why do some people blast loud music at 3 AM?

Why do some people rev their cars at midnight?

A lot of it is sheer inconsiderateness and selfishness.

I see no concern for the dog here. A barking dog is probably distressed somehow. Barking is a call for attention. I associate barking dogs with lonely dogs. Dogs whose owners are gone all day and they bark when they hear someone coming or dogs who are chained outside all the time. Loving families who extend that love to their critters rarely have obnoxious continuously barking dogs.

@crisw

I agree with you there, inconsiderate is the ticket.

I also agree with @anartist

But, sometimes dogs DO just bark at every little thing, neurotic pets of neurotic owners. lol

Consider this:
A friend of mine let her dogs out, and they would bark and bark and bark at the fence. Her neighbor complained and complained until she stopped letting the dogs go outside. Then one day, her neighbor told her how he put out nuts on the top of the fence for the squirrels. Now she lets the dogs go outside.

I don’t mind the barking so long as it isn’t constant at 3 in the morning. I don’t understand this idea of loving silence. It’s a huge reason of why I moved out of the suburbs and into the city. People make noise. Animals make noise. There’s something unnatural about trying to keep them quiet all the time.

We don’t know what to do (aside from bark collars and someone to babysit outside with them all day). We are those people. We have blended pets from two previous families and for some reason our unlonely little pack likes to bark. The smallest barks at birds and shadows. The largest barks at every sounds outside our HUGE backyard. The Middle dog barks at whatever the other two bark at. Two of our household work an average of 70hr weeks and the third one gets left with trying to upkeep the home and retrain these noisy ass animals. It sucks. Our dogs are healthy, comfortable, have lots of room, lots of love when people come home from work, regulated meal times, blah blah blah. We’ve got a neighbor who sings lovely ballads as he works outside, I’d love for him not to be barked at.

It drives me crazy to hear a dog bark incessantly. I don’t understand how owners don’t hear it. My last four dogs have been a breed that doesn’t bark much if at all. One of my boxers only bffff’d when there was someone in the yard or at the door. If a dog barks all the time, how would you know when it is barking to alert the owner of something such as a stranger approaching?

@chyna You don’t know the difference, but some people own them for reasons beyond wanting a watch/guarddog.

@chyna: There’s a difference in tone when the dogs are distressed over when they just bark for everything else. When the yard guy or pool guy comes then the dogs are blissfully quiet and peaceful- I’ve seen them flop out on the deck to nap in the sun. So weird. I think they like having a human outside with them they can see, just there.

@Neizvestnaya That’s funny. Your dogs stop barking when someone is there.

@chyna: The dogs know we have no human children living at home full time so maybe they don’t want us to go without the hustle and bustle?~

Its like the people who aren’t bothered by the noise their kids are making when they’re screaming at the top of their lungs. They’re used it it, its not bothering them, so why would it bother anyone else?

Our neighbors have screaming dogs. When they’re home I think they keep them inside. In other words, they aren’t subjected to their own dogs screaming, yelling and hitting the fence.

When I leave the house, my dogs are inside in the air conditioning with the radio on to keep them company. When I am home they are allowed to be in or out as they please but I do not allow them to bark incessantly at anything. An alarm bark is fine if someone is at the gate, but if they bark at passing dogs or people they are admonished quickly.

I don’t understand why people have dogs if they are going to keep them penned in the back yard. Most dogs want to be members of the family and what is the point of having them if they are not? But they need to be trained in order to become socially acceptable and so many people don’t take the time or have the interest. It is sad.

@crisw – so very true.

I wish training were so easy, @rooeytoo . We have a spaniel that barks like crazy when people or dogs walk past the house. Nothing seems to work….

@Dutchess_III – I would say keep the dog in the house unless you can be with it outside. Then I would stage the situation outside, have someone walk past when you are there and can punish quickly so there is no doubt in the dog’s mind that this is not socially acceptable behavior. Do this several times a day and as I said do not allow the dog out when you cannot be there to punish the behavior.

I have friends that had a solely outdoor dog and I always felt bad for her.

She was not penned on their property and she was never allowed in.

They fed her well, and she had a heated bed in the garage but the poor thing was starved for attention. They are not bad people, but, it falls into the category spoken of.

I have not had a dog since about 1997–8 but my dogs were always indoors with the family and they were big dogs too, a 90 something lb. Coonhound and a German Shepherd.

They were both perfectly housebroken and I wiped their feet at the door. lol

I just don’t understand those that won’t allow a pet into the house, I think it’s cruel to ignore a dog.

You know what’s the worst? When we walk the dogs at night then every other dog in the neighborhood senses/scents them and starts howling. You should see the porch lights and indoor lights come on!

I constantly tell my dog to stop barking,but he doesn’t. If it’s late at night, I close his dog door so he can’t get out. My grandson once came out of his room to see why our dog was barking and there he was, sitting quietly on his chair without making a sound. It was another dog.

Sometimes I really enjoy hearing my dog bark for a bit, as when I take her outside and chase squirrels with her. It’s also enirely obvious that she enjoys barking for a few minutes every day. Barking is the only way she can communicate with other dogs from a distance and I like watching her do so. More importantly, she likes doing so.

I’d personally be more embarrassed if my dog were overly timid and quiet and never made any noise. Unless it’s a breed that rarely barks, that would signal to me an unhealthy or an unhappy dog.

But then of course there are dogs that bark more or less incessantly because they are put outside and ignored by their owners. That’s not good either, and in that case it’s definitely the owner’s fault and a sign of neglect. But I think it’s inconsiderate to the dog to tell it to shush if it so much as barks once. In all seriousness, shame on you if you do that.

@absalom Some dogs just bark. Believe me, our dogs are not ignored. Our shepherd, Dakota, rarely barks. Our spaniel, Dutchess (who sleeps with us, bleh!) goes ape when people or dogs go by.

@Dutchess_III

Believe me, I understand. My dog barks when people walk by our house but usually calms down when we acknowledge her (and the protective services she’s bravely displaying). Sometimes, though, she doesn’t stop for maybe ten minutes, and there’s nothing we can do. But I had more in mind a dog on my street that is outside for most of the day and is penned in by an invisible fence. He is appropriately named Barkley and is lonely and runs up and down the length of the driveway and barks virtually the entire time he’s out there. In cases like that I think the owner is clearly at fault and guilty of neglect.

A dog is a living breathing creature with its own mind. They are going to do what they want no matter how good an owner is. Luckily, my dog does not bark a lot but I have been around dogs that do and sometimes nothing short of strangling the dog works. It’s like telling a bird to stop chirping. It’s its nature and form of communication. Do people tell you to shut up and do you always listen and do it?

I believe some people just don’t know how to handle their dogs. I had a neighbor once who adopted a large german shepard who would bark at anyone and anything and she didn’t know how to make it stop.
I only yelled at it once and it stopped barking. Did it maybe 2 more times and he stopped barking at any lights or people at my house. He would lay down and put his head down. After that he was always happy to see me and play.
She didn’t understand why he didn’t listen to her. She was a very sweet person with a very sweet light voiceand I think the dog simply didn’t see her as alpha, so he never listened. She always made it sound like a request instead of a demand.
Anyway. I think some people learn to ignore their dogs when they find they bought a dog that needs a firm owner and they don’t know how be the alpha leader.
Then of course there are the inconsiderate owners.
And there are the owners who want to let there dogs out but the neighborhood kids like to tease the dog and get it upset.
I had a neighbor who also had a dog that barked a lot. I could hardly blame it. They were always warm and cozy inside and he would be outside in cold weather or really hot weather.
I don’t know why people think they never get too hot or cold.
I would bark up a storm too. If I couldn’t be warm because of bad owners the whole neighborhood would know.
Simple answer to your questions is, people simply can be jerks to their neighbors and pets.

We had an across-the-fence neighbor with a lovely big dog who was so silent that we thought it was mute. One day the neighbor brought home a second dog, a rambunctious youngster. A few days later the neighbor handed his phone number to me across the fence and said, “The new dog is kind of dumb. It may take me a little longer to teach him not to bark. Call me if he bothers you when we’re not home.”

I asked him how long it would take him, and he said about a week. I was impressed. I remarked that another neighbor had a dog that barked constantly. (It went on for three years and just about drove me mad, especially while working at home through the summer with the windows open.) He said, “I don’t know why people let that happen. Any dog can be trained not to bark.”

I took the opportunity to ask him about his other dog. “Oh, yes, she can bark,” he said. “She just knows not to.”

I wish I had asked him how he did it. I knew from his manner that it was not by some cruelty.

This morning as I stood in the back yard and watched our smallest dog run off to a corner to look up at the sky and bark at an overhead passing plane, I thought of this thread. Calmly I called to him to come back to “The Pack”, piece of kibble in hand- you know, just in case he actually acknowledged my voice and looked in my direction. Nothing. I told the other two dogs to sit before me, I looked appreciatively and lovingly into their face and gave them each a kibble just for not barking and running around like junkyard dogs. Oh well, there’s always the next time and the next time and then next time.

@Neizvestnaya It was his rendition of “Leaving on a Jet Plane”.

@chyna: I wish that dog would leave on a jetplane but he’s my bf’s personal favorite creature in all the world.

I live in Barbados now and the majority of the local Bajans own dogs so it’s not just one or two it is almost every house some areas every house.

Where I am currently located is stressing and making me very unhappy so coupled with the house and lack of privacy I am moving.

There is a neighbour with 4 small dogs who bark at anything that passes they run to the fence and go crazy running back and forth, postman, people walking pass, trucks cars even their next door neighbours sometimes it’s awful as they are very loud and God forbid a walker with their dog to pass well!!! There is another at the side of me who breeds dogs the puppy when in the hutch cries awful noise and it’s mother howls, In fact I have 18 dogs in close proximity around me all kept outside 24hr either tied or loose in a enclosed fenced garden.

I tried to speak to a couple of the owners I was told that’s what dogs do they bark!!!! Well I was speechless!! Some of them bark for over an hour non stop it’s something I’ve never experienced in my life when I lived in the UK where we have lots of dog lovers. As I type this a dog has been barking for over an hour and the owner is in.

I hope to move soon to somewhere quieter it is an island fetish dogs but hopefully not as bad as this location.