Why Does My Dog Bark?
Barking is a dog's natural means of communication and often signifies its alertness to danger. This makes it useful, even to owners of adjoining properties, who can also benefit from the protection of a good watch dog.
Continual barking is another matter and is usually due to one or more of the following:
- Loneliness and boredom
- Chaining the dog to a fixed point with insufficient movement or restricting the dog to too small an area for long periods of time
- Deliberate or unintentional provocation by people or by roaming dogs
- Lack of reasonable exercise
- Failure to provide suitable shelter from rain, wind, cold and heat
- Discomfort due to hunger, thirst, skin irritation, troublesome flies, and so on
Continual barking may well be a cry for help. Unnecessary barking can usually be eliminated, or at least reduced, but it may mean that you must work harder at being a dog owner!