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Barking at hot air balloons

Sun, 05/11/2008 - 18:24 — samaar

I have a nine year old Rhodesian Ridgeback who likes to bark at hot air balloons. My house is directly under the flight path and he can hear them coming from miles away and can watch them almost down to the ground when they land because we are at the top of the hill. They usually go over between 6.00 and 7.30am and he barks continuously while they go over. Sometimes there can be 3 or 4 go over in a morning. My neighbours are good about it, but tolerance has its limits. It is especially bad on the weekend when everyone is wanting to sleep in. They are unpredictable, as we may go days or weeks without one and then they can come every day for a fortnight. I can't keep him locked in while they go over, as often I have long left for work before they appear. When they go over, I call him in and give him a bone or liver treat to get him in the door. I know this rewards and reinforces his barking, but I have to stop the noise before we get reported to the council. I have just heard about clicker training, and am keen to apply postitive training methods to try to solve this problem. Can you please help? He also barks at the postie and if someone walks by the house, but does not bark for 'no reason'. Apart from hot air balloons and the postie, he might go days without barking.

Comments

Mon, 05/12/2008 - 13:51 — Aidan
Aidan's picture

Hmmmm, tough one! But

Hmmmm, tough one! But different :-)

I HATE dealing with unpredictable stimuli. It's so much easier when we can organise a controlled set-up. Can you find out from the booking company or hot air balloon club ahead of time on which days they have bookings? That gives you something to work with.

The basic strategy for this sort of problem is to teach an alternative, preferably incompatible behavior to the behavior you don't want, then make the stimulus a cue for the behavior you DO want.

Obviously, this is much easier when you can control the stimulus.

Start off by teaching your alternative behavior using clicker training. This might be to go to kennel and stay there for 1 minute, for e.g Put it on cue, something like "kennel up!"

Get the behavior really strong, almost unbreakable. You should be able to leave food in his path or roll a ball and have him ignore it and go straight to kennel for 1 minute.

When the behavior is THAT strong, and not before then, use it when balloons are passing overhead. With enough repetitions he will eventually start anticipating that you will cue him to kennel up when a hot air balloon passes overhead. When that happens, start dropping the cue to kennel up. Fade it out by saying it more quietly until you don't say it at all.

This is a fairly long training process, I would opt for management instead personally. If you can find out which days the balloons are passing overhead then bring him inside the night before. As a compromise you could bring him in on weekends regardless so at least everyone gets a quiet lie-in on weekends. Is he crate trained?

As a legal issue, find out what constitutes grounds for complain in your area. I doubt this much barking would be grounds for complaint. That doesn't excuse us decent people from trying to make life better for our neighbours, but it might remove SOME of the stress from the situation.

Some people would opt for punishment in this sort of situation. What they forget is that it can backfire. If the dog is anxious about the balloons passing overhead then adding something else to be anxious about won't help the situation. It might inhibit barking if done EXTREMELY well, but I can't imagine what the dog must be feeling in that sort of situation. I only mention this because I know I'll get email about it ;-) not because you brought it up.

Regards,
Aidan
http://www.positivepetzine.com

Mon, 05/12/2008 - 13:53 — Aidan
Aidan's picture

just a thought, weather is

just a thought, weather is probably the reason why you have balloons on some days and not others. The weather forecast might be a good indicator of when you should leave your dog inside or not.

Regards,
Aidan
http://www.positivepetzine.com