Demand Barking??

[jaclyn.bailey]

Bailey is 6 months old and attends training/agility classes and daycare at the same facility. The trainers are very good and have been training dogs for years, some are even certified trainers and the daycare staff is lovely. However, at her last daycare appointment I asked them to reassess Bailey as she is currently in the puppy package where she gets special attention/training and individualized walks and I wanted to see if she is ready to come off that package. So after they reassessed her, one of the daycare attendants said she doesn't feel that Bailey is ready to go off the puppy package as she does lots of demand barking at the staff and other dogs but has good manners and responds to her name, etc. My issue with this is that Bailey doesn't do any demand barking at home or when we are out in public. She will do the occasional bark when she wants to be noticed or when she sees another dog and gets into her playful mood but my experiences with her on this doesn't seem to be the same as what they are saying.

I think the issue is she is overly excited to be at the same facility where she attends daycare and training classes because they're philosophy is positive reinforcement = treats treats treats. Which is fine because I treat her at home when we practice our hand signals and voice commands. They also said that they find it difficult to get her to rest/nap but I have no difficulty with that at home.

Has anyone had any similar experiences with this? Does it seem like a good idea to take her out of the daycare? The way it was worded to me was like it was an inconvenience to them that they have to 'work' on her so much. She only attends once every two weeks for 5 hour. They asked me to work on ignoring her demand barking at home which I do ignore when she does do the little demand bark here and there but I can't work on something when it doesn't happen constantly like they say it does.

Don't get me wrong, everyone there is very lovely! Any opinions/tips are welcome... !

[Tanya]

it's not "the philosophy of positive reinforcement" that creates issues. the philosophy is to reward what you want (VS punish what you don't want, VS remove punishment when they do what you do want VS remove good things when they don't do what you want). IF they reward barking then YES they are cuing that behavior and encouraging it but that isn't because of the training philosophy. it's because of what the trainer is rewarded

I would be honest that it's not much of an issue at home so it's something about that environment (likely much more high energy and more stuff going on) or how they reward (what they have maybe accidentally rewarded) that is causing the issue. I suspect it's the environment. so hard for you to work on that other than practicing her in other busy busy environments that bring her to that level.

please just don't blame "positive reinforcement" for causing the behavior. Positive reinforcement is NOT "treat treat treat". it's marking and rewarding the behavior you want, the behavior you want repeated. Rewards, once a behavior is learned, should be phased out. once the dog knows you move on from the "training a new command" phase and either into proofing (they know to do it in all times in all places - here you are still in training so would reward, then phase out again) or to just keeping the behaviour (here you would not reward reward reward - you may randomly reward just to keep things fresh but it should be sporadic and unexpected).

[Labradorks]

If she is only going once every two weeks for five hours, then yes, she is probably over threshold (over-excited) which is causing excitement, stressing up, etc.