[nekomi]

It seems like Loki's excessive barking issue just keeps showing up in different contexts...

Some of you might remember that when Loki first arrived here, we had a lot of issues with his barking. If I was outside and he was in the outdoor run, he'd bark and bark at me the entire time - a constant, incessant repetitive bark. I tried 2 weeks of ignoring the behavior (no reinforcement by me whatsoever) and there was no change. Then, I tried a Citronella bark collar - that worked for a week or so, then he ignored it. Then I tried (I know) a shock bark collar but that had no effect whatsoever, so I discontinued it after the first day.

It finally ended up that I would manage the behavior by crating him whenever I was going to be outside. This gave me some much-needed peace but didn't really solve the underlying barrier frustration. Well, as we progressed through crate training and I began giving him time in the crate with me in the room, he started the exact same pattern of barking at me through the crate. Constant, repetitive, high-pitched panicky barks. I did what Susan Garrett recommends in "Ruff Love" and covered the crate on the first bark, then removed the cover after 2 minutes of silence. It worked beautifully and in just one day, the behavior of barking through the crate was eliminated.

Due to the play yard being mud soup right now with all the rain we've been having, the last week or two I've been letting Willow, Bandit, and Loki (or sometimes just one or two of them) out to play and hang out in the kennel run. Well, now Loki's barking is surfacing there as well - I'll be sitting inside the house, I'll hear the incessant barking coming from the kennel, I peek out there and see one of the following scenarios:

a) Willow or Bandit (or both) is asleep or trying to rest, Loki is in their face barking incessantly as they ignore him. Sometimes it's as though he forgets why he's barking, and his gaze will "drift" away from the target dog and around the kennel, but the barking continues. This has gone on for upwards of an hour, when I let it go to see if he would stop on his own.

b) All three dogs are playing... Willow and Bandit start wrestling, Loki gets in their face and barks repetitively. They either ignore him, or get snarky and snap at him because he's pestering them. This goes on for 15 - 30 minutes at times.

My current strategy, just to save my sanity from the constant threat of noise (not to mention my neighbor), is to crate Loki when I hear that first repetitive bark. This hardly seems fair for him, though, since it seems that these days he's spending more time in the crate than he is loose... when I let him back outside he immediately starts up the behavior again. I could reduce the length of his "time outs" (currently they are about 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on what else I'm doing at the moment), but I'd be running back and forth with him constantly. Also, I know that MORE time in the crate is just not good for him since he's very exercise-dependent... but since all his free time these days seems to include barking, it's very hard to juggle his need for exercise with my family's need for some peace and quiet. Walking is good but doesn't tire him out as much as he needs. I'm hoping that trying him in harness might help, but from what I've seen, he really needs that no-holds-barred, running crazily around the yard time each day.

He also can't be loose in the house unsupervised because we're still working on housebreaking, and he's also not reliable yet around my cats.

I guess what I'm asking is, am I on the right track? What would you all suggest to help with this barking problem? It just seems to keep cropping up in different scenarios and I'm definitely having trouble staying on top of it all.

(Edited to add that he does get mental stimulation each day through training, and puzzles like Kongs, etc.)