Cyprus Lifestyle

Page 14

PETS

Understanding your dog barking: Communicating with your dog bark, but it always

W

e looked at Google search data from January 2020 to December 2020 to find out what dog owners were searching for the most online. The searches with the highest average monthly search volume were “dog barking”, “dog separation anxiety”, “dog noise”, “dog anxiety”, and “stop dog barking” with 27,100, 6,600, 5,400, 4,400, and 4,400 searches respectively. All dogs bark, this is normal and can be their way of communicating with us. They might be trying to tell us that they’re hungry or thirsty, are feeling lonely, or need to go to the toilet. Understanding the different types of dog barks will let us know whether our dog is being a nuisance or needs something in particular. A dog may bark as a warning, an invitation, a call of distress, or just because it's happy. There are many reasons for the

14

means your dog is communicating something. If your dog is barking excessively, the first step is understanding why. Prolonged, non-stop barking, with intervals in between can signal loneliness and feeling unhappy. One single yelp or a highpitched bark can signal unexpected pain A series of yelps or highpitched barks can signal fear or pain. Rapid barks with pauses – something is wrong, i.e. they sense an intruder.

anxiety. They will also pace, act out repetitive behaviour, destroy things in the house, and will go to the toilet in the house. However, you don’t see this because it occurs when you’re out. To find out if your dog has separation anxiety, you could set up a camera to monitor your dog’s behaviour.

One or two short, medium-pitched barks – usually a greeting sound.

If your dog displays these symptoms, it’s a sign that they’re struggling being left alone so much, so you need to avoid leaving them alone so frequently and so long.

If you’re getting reports from neighbours that your dog is barking a lot when you’re out, this is a sign of separation

The more rapidly your dog barks, the more urgently they are attempting to communicate.

Continuous barks lowerpitch – a dog that can sense an imminent problem.


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.