One very good way of stopping your border collie barking is to use a no-attention discriminative stimulus. This can help dogs who bark and whine for attention and become very frustrated or anxious when their behaviour doesn’t result in the anticipated reward. Their anticipated reward could be being thrown a toy, being stroked, or even being told to be quiet.
Why do some dogs bark and whine?
Some dogs that bark and whine constantly may be struggling to settle because something is giving them pain or discomfort. If the border collie barking behaviour is new, if your dog seems unwell, or if this training guide doesn’t help, then always have your dog checked out at the vet’s. They may be trying to tell us something and it’s important not to ignore them in this situation. This article explains more about how collies can often show no physical symptoms but still be in pain.
Dogs that bark or whine constantly in certain contexts, such as when the owners are trying to relax in the lounge at night, are reacting to this context as a discriminative stimulus. They may have learned that whining works by getting them attention (the reward) so they persist in doing it. The problem with this type of problem behaviour is that it’s hard to ignore because it’s irritating, or you may be concerned about complaints from the neighbours. So we may have tried to ignore it for increasingly long amounts of time, then had to give in and do something to stop it. This is, unfortunately, the best way of building duration into a behaviour. The dogs learn that if they keep vocalising for longer and longer times they will eventually be rewarded.
What is a discriminative stimulus?
A discriminative stimulus can be a cue – for example dogs can pick out of our long word chains certain words such as “sit” and this becomes a discriminative stimulus telling a dog that if it sits, a reward will follow. However, a discriminative stimulus can also be much more subtle, such as a context. For example, a certain family member sitting at the table and eating can be a discriminative stimulus if they often feed the dog during meals. The dog has learned that hanging about near that person, and potentially begging or vocalising can result in a reward.
Even more subtly, we can be a discriminative stimulus when we sit down at a desk to work, or sit with our laptops. Our dogs can learn that we are very unlikely to interact with them in this context, so are more able to settle. But dogs often leap up when the laptop lid shuts or the TV is turned off because this is a discriminative stimulus that we are doing something different, often taking them out for a walk or training, aware that we have been working for too long!
How can a discriminative stimulus help with barking or whining?
Using a new discriminative stimulus when you are not going to interact with the dog can help in exactly the same way as some dogs understand that when their owner picks up a laptop, they will get no play time or walks for as long as the laptop is on the owner’s lap. The discriminative stimulus can teach the dog that while the discriminative stimulus is there, the owner will not interact with them at all.
What can we use as a no-attention discriminative stimulus?
A discriminative stimulus can be anything you choose to use, but it has to be easily visible to the dog. In the case of attention seeking vocalisation, the dog’s attention is usually on a certain person or people, so it makes sense if the discriminative stimulus is on or close to the subject of the attention seeking.
If the dogs’ attention is on one person, the following are good ideas:
- An item of clothing (ideally something different to what you usually wear). And something you can equally use in summer or winter.
- A tabard/bib such as a high vis one (but it doesn’t have to be high vis).
- Wearing a certain scarf or hat.
- Folding a tea towel over the arm of the chair or on your lap.
If the dog’s attention is on lots of people, hoping for attention from more than one person, then the following can be helpful:
- Any of the above options still apply – only one person needs to use them.
- An object in the room, such as a really ugly ornament (e.g. from a charity shop) that you won’t want to leave out (so you don’t forget to remove it)
- A scarf or ribbon tied on a door handle
How do we start training to prevent border collie barking?
If your dog already responds to you working on a laptop or looking at your phone as a discriminative stimulus for no attention, then you already have a no-attention discriminative stimulus Just use this to stop the barking/whining. If not, the following explains how to train the new no-attention discriminative stimulus.
Start very slowly and build up gradually.
- Interact with the dog calmly and in a relaxed way.
- Bring out the discriminative stimulus and completely ignore the dog for 2-3 seconds. It is often best to have a book nearby, so you just pick up the book, or look at your phone. But you can just look at the TV or sit and look out the window. This stage is sometimes called “bringing out the invisible dog” because we are going to behave as if the dog is invisible.
- Remove the discriminative stimulus and behave normally again.
- If your dog can cope with this, increase the time period by a few more seconds.
If your dog continues to cope, continue to increase the time period by a few seconds each day. If they don’t cope, go back to the shorter time period that they were last able to cope with, and work on that for a little longer before increasing again.