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Message: [QUOTE="storrsroars, post: 4122992, member: 2500"] All good points. My current boy is a Great Pyrenees/Golden Retriever mix. A really dumb designer breed that just should never happen. Looks like a sturdier version of dumb happy Golden, but is wired to protect whatever is inside the fence, whether that's livestock or us. He was downright scary as hell to the neighbors, even when he saw them every single day. He'll be turning 8 next month and we've had him for 5 years, and it's only in the past 1.5 years or so that he's relatively calm (by his standards) with the neighbors. It took a ton of work and even a dog psychologist for a bit. We learned the best thing to do was simply distract him when he gets going with the incessant barking. When we got him he didn't even have a concept of "play", was awful on a leash to the point where my wife couldn't control him. Every dusk he'd just bark and bark and bark as that's what Pyrs do at that time of day while they patrol the border fences. However, once he's away from our yard and what he perceives is "his territory to protect", he's a different animal. I can show up with him to the neighbor's front door and he's perfectly fine, whereas he used to be near foaming at the mouth at the same neighbor if he was inside the fence. Took a lot of time outside distracting, correcting and rewarding him to get to where we are now, which still isn't ideal as far as barking, but it's 1000x better than when we got him. All that said, five years later he's been a great dog and it's been more fulfilling getting him to become a companion than it was raising my late purebred Golden from a puppy. He's a fantastic trail dog, a great car companion, now loves to play, and is eager to learn new things even at 8. Get to understand the breed and work with that. You're not going to beat out all the behaviors that are inbred, so try to work around those and find a way to provide games/exercises that allow your pup to deal with those instincts in a productive way. [/QUOTE]

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