Hi everyone, I'm new here. I have two border collie crosses, one 15 and one 5. The 15 year old has been deaf now for almost 1 year. The problem is that the younger dog seems to think she should bark now at almost everything, e.g. phone ringing, mobile ringing, me getting up from settee, opening back door, more or less everything:( I can only assume she has started this to let the older dog know something is going on because he just lies sleeping. Any idea how to stop this as it is becoming most annoying.

All dogs need a job to do, and Border Collies are notorious for finding their own problematic ones. She probably finds it confusing that he no longer responds to her alerts and tries to cope by barking more.

Perhaps getting involved in some training or competition would help. Mixed breeds are welcome in obedience training, advanced, agility, fly ball, free form dancing, etc. You could look into herding.

I have never used a bark collar, but I have read credible reports of dogs developing worse problems using one.

Hi thanks for your answers they are appreciated. I shall give suggestions a try and see how she gets on. I did try a barking hand held alarm device which worked a couple of times with her, then she chose to ignore it!

I am not a proponent of bark collars. celion, please use the training technique that paws has outlines. You can incorporate a short, sharp correction such as "ch, ch, ch" or "ah, ah, ah" to focus her attention onto you and away from whatever she is barking at. Then direct her to sit, or lie down. If she tries to bark while being in the sit or down command, correct again with the "ch, ch, ch" or the "ah, ah, ah" and say "No". Once she completely settles down, you should reward with a happy sounding "good girl" and a pat. It will take a number of times for it to sink in, but after a while, when she barks and you direct her to sit or lie down, she will do so quietly. Depending on how quickly or slowly she picks this up, you may have to direct her to "stay" in that position until the noise passes by.

I've heard that one of the ways to teach a dog not to bark is to actually teach them to bark on command. I think that the reasoning is that, when you do that, you generally teach them to "speak" and to be "quiet" so that they can then be told to speak again. And the dog learns that there are times that it gets rewarded for barking, and times when it doesn't, and generally prefers to do what it gets rewarded for.

But I have no experience with this myself.