Barking: The Sound of a Language

Dogwise Training Manual

By: Turid Rugaas

Narrated by: Debra Shieber

Barking is more than just noise. Barking is natural, and almost all dogs bark. It is one of the many ways dogs communicate with each other as well as with humans. In this book, author Turid Rugaas, well known for her work on identifying and utilizing canine calming signals, turns her attention to understanding and managing barking behavior.

Think of barking as your dog's language. By learning to identify what your dog is expressing when he barks, you can take steps to minimize their negative effects.

You will learn:

• How to utilize knowledge of canine body language to help you communicate with your dog before barking gets out of hand.
• Barking characteristics of different breeds and groups of dogs.
• How to recognize six types of barking and their causes.
• Step-by-step training methods to solve barking problems.

©2008 Dogwise Publishing (P)2024 Dogwise Publishing

Listen to understand and be less annoyed!

Rugas provides detailed classifications of different types of barking (e.g. excitement, warning, fear) and stresses the importance of responding appropriately to each type of bark. It also offers practical strategies for managing and training dogs to reduce problem barking, while still allowing them to express themselves. When I started thinking of barking as a language (like a foreign language that I wanted to learn), it helped me listen for the meaning of my dog’s barking rather than just being annoyed by it.

A Solid Primer For The Pet Owner

Barking: The Sound Of A Language is a solid, simple assistant for the pet parent who has a barky dog. Professional trainers will probably not be very interested in this book; although it does make some universally helpful concrete suggestions for managing the different types of barking, it very much comes at canine behavior from a layman’s perspective (which was not what I was expecting from a world-renowned behaviorist, to be honest).

That’s not necessarily a weakness, however. Because it’s not technical and doesn’t expect the reader to understand complex training concepts, it serves as a great companion to the casual owner who just needs a little help living peacefully with their dog. There’s a lot of anthropomorphism, but I feel that it’s presented in a way that helps readers think humanely about the way their dogs live and behave, rather than confusing the functional side of things – which is useful in this context, given that barking is so commonly caused by boredom, frustration, and general husbandry issues. I also feel that that is likely to help readers who just want their dog to stop barking to understand why simply punishing away the behavior isn’t the best or most practical solution.

The main thing I disliked about this book was the section on fear, specifically the section on counter-conditioning. As an environmental stability specialist who works with a lot of reactive and aggressive dogs, first, it bothered me that this was one of the only extremely specialized terms in the book, and second, I did not like the way it was presented. That section wasn’t written poorly, per se, but neither was it written as clearly or presented in as much detail as I frankly feel that this topic needs to be presented in. Attempting to counter-condition fearful animals to stimuli they’ve already become sensitized to is SO easy to do badly. And then you’ve either made the fear and anxiety worse, or you’ve done nothing, but when you then go to a professional trainer who is experienced and tells the pet owner that that’s the plan, they say they’ve already tried that, it doesn’t work, and they think there’s no point and quit the training plan.

All in all, though, I enjoyed this book and would probably give it, or scanned sections of it, to clients who came to me for help barking. It was very clear and straightforward, helps the reader put themselves in the dog’s shoes, and overall is a solid quick manual on pinpointing the problem causing the barking (rather than problematizing the barking itself) and taking practical action to mitigate it.

As for the audio aspect of things – Debra Shieber does a good job reading and narrating this book, although not an exceptional one (the occasional mispronounced word irked me). I particularly appreciated her attempts to replicate precisely what the author was describing at times… by which I mean, if the text read “Bark, growl, bark,” Shieber did indeed bark, growl, and then bark again hahaha. I respect that.

A Must, for Dog Lovers!

Ms Rugaas has packed A LOT in just a few chapters. This book is so dense with information yet compact enough to repeat listening to more than once. And it is worth the time.
We have started implementing a few of the techniques with our pack and love the results so far.
We highly recommend her series of books to any dog owner, especially to anyone looking at adopting a puppy or dog so that you develop useful habits in your relationship with the animal and avoid common mistakes.