Barking
Biggest bugbear of the biggest floof
One of the most common questions asked about Maremmas is: “How do I stop them barking?”.
The answer is simple: you can’t. Without their bark, Maremmas are just another large white dog.
However, neither should Maremmas bark day and night. That goes beyond useful threat-management into sheer annoyance.
You can - and absolutely should - mitigate the barking through the usual means - training, training, and more training.
Today’s post offers some suggestions on doing that.
Contents
How to think about barking
Is it all the same?
How do I train them?
Additional notes about puppies
How to think about barking
You can’t stop a Maremma from barking. They’ve been bred to respond to what they determine to be a threat, and their first response is to bark.
The thing to remember is that barking is part of the reason Maremmas exist. Their job is to protect and warn, and barking is the first line of defence for them doing their job. It's their communication with you - "Boss! Something odd out here! Come and tell me the next thing to do!".
So any question that starts "How do I stop my Maremma barking?" is asking the wrong question.
The correct question is "how do I teach my Maremma what's a threat and what's not, so they only bark at real threats?".
The problem is that they tend to consider a zombie frog farting three paddocks over, the full moon, and a fox prowling right outside their flock, as equal threats.
In good news, however, Maremmas can be trained to differentiate between these differing levels of threats - and they do that by listening to your response.
It requires a bit of work on your part - expect to be having a chat to your Maremma at extremely-dark-and-cold-o’clock for a good three months at least (depending on the age of the dog and its background).
Is it all the same?
No. Barking can roughly be divided into three groups. (Thanks to John Roger for this part).
Patrol Barking: "Hey, any predators out there, I'm just letting you know I am here & on duty! So don't even think about it!"
Alert Barking: "I think I see/hear/smell something amiss!"
Immediate Threat Barking: “That definitely shouldn’t be here and needs to be made not be here!”
You thus want your dog/s to ease back on the "patrol barking", have good differentiation of "alert barking", and leave them to let rip on the "immediate threat barking".
I will also personally add a fourth:
Boredom or Attention-getting Barking: “Hello my beloved human/s, I’d like some attention please. Please. Please. Please. PLLLEEEEEASEEEEEEE …”.
Many will say Maremmas don’t do this.
My own experience is that like any dog, they can, if their individual personality and/or background brings out this habit. It’s certainly not common, and may be particular to dogs with a less-than-ideal history before arriving with you.
Bella came to me clingy and unhappy from a bad experience with a male human just beforehand. She bonded closely with me as her “rescuer” from the situation, and to this day craves more attention from me than any of the other Maremmas do. She has a particular puppy-like yelp-howl-bark she uses to demand that attention. It drives me insane; and thus it works, because she can keep it up indefinitely.
How do I train them?
You use the human-Maremma bond of partnership. Maremmas need humans to guide and educate them; humans need Maremmas to protect and guard. It’s a co-dependent relationship developed over millennia.
Your job, when a Maremma barks, is to pay attention, identify the issue, and tell the Maremma how to respond.
Do this enough, and the Maremma learns from you; and you can stop having to respond so much.
Therefore, you must not discipline a Maremma in the first instance when barking.
You don’t use physical discipline against Maremmas and other LGDs anyway; this can get you reclassified in their head from “Boss” or “flock member” to “threat”.
Yelling at a Maremma that’s barking is seen by them as your boss yelling at you for doing precisely the job you’re being paid to do. At best, they’ll just ignore you. At worst, you risk teaching them not to alert you to threats at all.
What you need to do is teach your Maremma what is a real threat, and what isn't.
You do this by responding each and every time your Maremma barks. Yes, even at 3am on a cold dark winter's night. Every.Single.Time.
The trick is in the tone of voice you use to respond. The words are largely irrelevant, except that dogs will learn to respond to particular words in a particular way.
So here's what I do.
Stand and listen for a moment. If it’s daylight, I’ll look in their direction as well. Is there something obvious going on? Noises, crashing, rustling, a large shape around?
If there’s nothing obvious, I'll call, as a generic enquiry, "What's up, pups?". The rhyme means I sing it, and they can generally hear it even right down to the bottom of the paddock. Generally, they'll go quiet for a moment, so I can actually hear what's going on and before you ask, I have no idea how I trained them to do that. It just happened.
I suspect it’s the Maremma’s natural response to being taken seriously - “oh, good, someone’s listening; I’ll wait for them to do the next thing”.
And sometimes, that's all that's needed. The second-in-commands have brought an issue to the CEO's attention; they've done their job and can walk away.
Sometimes, however, they keep barking.Make a decision on a response.
Is it clearly harmless? Respond with humour, in the warmest and most amused voice I can rustle up. "It's a farting zombie frog three paddocks away/the full moon, you numpties. Hush". My tone of voice tells them I've paid attention to them, and that I'm not concerned, and therefore they don't need to be.
And this, in case you were wondering, is where the zombies come in. Because zombies don’t exist1; thus, blaming zombie frogs makes your voice full of humour and calm; thus, your voice tells the dog there’s nothing to worry about.Sound or visuals on a true threat: "GOOD dogs!" in the warmest, most approving tone possible. I don't want to say any more because I want them to keep on barking. If I praise them too much, I worry they'll hand over responsibility to me.
This is important. You don’t want them to go quiet in the face of a real threat.No sound or vision or an obvious threat: "Good dogs" in a very neutral tone. Just because I can't see or hear (or smell) it doesn't mean it's there.
For example - foxes can be utterly silent when they're actually attacking, and they kill quickly by snapping chook necks. They can knock off 10 birds literally while you're standing there listening, and you won't hear a damn thing. (Ask me how I know).
Owls and bats fly overhead silently, which can seriously startle an alert dog. Large owls (eg the Powerful Owl) can be a threat to poultry in the paddock - for eg, nesting guineafowl, or roaming ducks.
Trust your Maremma.
Go and investigate. If they continue barking, and get more urgent, despite my response, I'll go out there and have a look. Bella and Pieta will just keep barking, but Romeo will lead me to the place he's concerned about. I really do trust him - if he says something's there, something is there.
I mean ok, sometimes it's utterly harmless, just different - but that's not the point. There IS something, so they're barking for good reason.Give up. If they keep barking despite my going to have a look, I go back to bed and pull the pillow over my head, because clearly there's something going on.
If you absolutely need them to be quiet in these situations, you can try standard training methods - ask for quiet, reward constantly while barking is NOT happening, and scold gently at the next bark - '“uh-uh”.
However, be aware that there could be a fox scratching at your fencing that's stopped for the moment, or something walking just outside the gate … or a bat that passed overhead briefly.
Or the full moon.
Over time, the need for the "you’re barking at the goats eating a squeaky piece of grass, you absolute nong" commentary - accompanied by gales of laughter (I kid you not; that happened to me) - fades, and you can start trusting that if they're barking, there's a very good reason.
Aside from the full moon. Give up now. :)
Other things to try
Other methods for teaching your dogs what to respond to and what not include:
having to go out and dance to the neighbours really loud music to show it’s all just fun.
making noises imitating the noise causing the problems - eg motorbikes, frogs, the strange bit of music on the radio …
shining the torch out the window so they know I’m up; this can shift dogs from “alert the Boss to something going on” to “I will now go check what’s happening”.
Additional notes about puppies
There’s another reason your dog could be barking a lot - it’s a puppy.
Which means a Maremma under 2 years of age.
Maremma puppies are amazingly obedient, calm, and quiet (for puppies) until about 6-7 months of age.
That's about when the Maremma instincts start coming out, colliding with puppy behaviour and the slow road to maturation.
What that means is they discover they want to protect things - you, mostly. And "protect" means "bark at threats".
But they're too young to have learnt what's a threat and what's not - and to a puppy, everything's a threat anyway.
So they bark at everything. Real, in their heads, distant, close ... if it suddenly seems "new" to them, there will be barking.
This collides with the Maremma independent thinking, of course, which starts out as stubbornness and not-listening because puppy. "NO you can't tell me what to do and NO I don't trust you because I'm growing out of my puppy trust of things bigger than me!!".
Boys seem to be more grimly brick-wall stubborn, whereas girls seem to be sneaky misbehaviour independent.
All you can do is grit your teeth, focus on the behaviours you want - "accurately identify threats and bark at them and ONLY them" and "trust me as your CEO and I'll trust you as my second-in-command" - and assist/reward the behaviours that head toward that.
Use the options listed above, as a starting point.
I hope this has been a little bit helpful in understanding why Maremmas bark and how you can manage both their barking and your response to it.
Love to hear comments, feedback, suggestions, or your own stories!
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