Some dogs are being territorial about “their” door and home, and alert other dogs and their owners with their preferred method of announcing of a visitor — LOUD barking. Inadvertent reinforcement of dog behavior at the door by the humans can increase their frenzied response.
Another common reason that dogs bark at the door, especially very friendly dogs, is because they know that people standing near the door may soon be entering the house. They may even believe that their barking made the door open faster.
Ask your dog to stay and open the door without anyone outside first. If your dog holds his stay, reward him heavily! I give my own dogs several treats in a row. Once he is holding his stay throughout, it is time to add a person outside and repeat the process until your dog can hold his stay while the person enters.
Many people assume that dogs bark at people entering a space because they want to be "in control" of who comes into their perceived "territory." However, behind what can look like territorial aggression is often a fearful pet who simply feels unsafe.
Many dogs that show territorial responses are often fearful and anxious and just want the intruder to leave. The longer the person stays within the territory, the more aggressively aroused the dog may become. The goal of the territorial display is to get the "intruder" to leave.
According to Mikkel Becker, a pet trainer who writes for Vetstreet.com, that's normal K-9 behavior. Your dog just wants to see who is there and say hello. You need to teach them to calm down. You want them to learn that the only way they'll get attention and get petted by your guests is for them to sit down.
Dogs are able to identify, with ease, the scent of someone they recognize over the someone they have yet to meet. Even before an individual walks through the door, dogs have been alerted to who it is using their senses of smell and hearing.
If your puppy is normally calm in your presence and starts acting hyper when your husband comes home, he or she may misbehave as a way to get some attention. Perhaps when hubby comes home, you stop paying attention to your puppy and start talking to your husband, cooking, or watching a favorite TV show together.
Dogs can smell our emotional changes: Due to their elevated sense of smell, dogs are highly sensitive to changes in our body odor that are undetectable to other humans. Dogs can smell the chemical changes that occur when we feel different emotions, such as happiness or anger, and this impacts their response.
Often, this is simply a case of access, or lack of it. If one person spends more time at home with the dog, naturally the dog will want to see and spend time with the other partner, too.
Territoriality: Sometimes dogs growl when they feel the need to defend their territory—think of the mailman approaching the door. When the dog sees someone who it believes doesn't belong on the property, it wants to let them know that they're overstepping their boundaries.
Reasons Why Your Dog Barks at the Door
Some dogs have learned that scary things happen after a knock at the door or a doorbell ring, like a stranger entering the home. Other dogs can be simply frustrated because they want to see what's on the other side immediately!
Yes, dogs can get jealous, but dog trainers say gentle training can help you manage the behavior. If your dog is jealous, they may whine, bark, growl, or push other pets or people away from you. Dogs may get jealous because they don't want to lose your attention and affection to someone else.
In fact, dogs have so much love to give that sometimes they can struggle to make room for anyone else. According to experts, many breeds of dogs are prone to jealousy in response to their owners' attention being diverted.
They Are ''Splitting'' a Perceived Conflict
In the dog world, kissing and hugging do not exist, so your pet may have a hard time clearly understanding what is going on, particularly when the romantic behavior they observe is on the more passionate side.
Science of Dogs Being Able to Sense Good and Bad People
Well, dogs are extremely sensitive when it comes to the way in which humans act and sound. This is what enables them to determine whether a person is good or bad and whether a person likes dogs or dislikes them.
While your dog will remember you leaving the house, they most likely won't understand how long you were away. When dogs are left alone, sometimes they become stressed (stemming from their separation anxiety), indicating that they have an awareness of the passage of time.
How far a dog smells depends on conditions such as wind and type of scent, but they have been reported to smell objects and people over 12 miles away. Dogs' olfactory systems work so well that they can be trained to pick up odors as little as a pictogram which is a trillionth of a gram.
Sometimes dogs will react negatively to a person if there is a physical attribute that bothers them. It could be as random as someone wearing a hat, a shirt color, if they're sporting a beard or wearing glasses, and so on. A new person wearing something they haven't seen before may be unsettling to them.
Familiarity Breeds Love
In a very familiar place, such as your own house, they saw that dogs are more likely to seek attention from your guests than from you. In an unfamiliar setting, however, dogs will respond less to strangers, appear guarded and look to their owner for calm and assurance.
The best way of treating aggression towards strangers is to prevent it by socializing your dog when they are young, exposing your dog to lots of different situations and people in a safe, controlled environment, and teaching your dog that strangers are not a threat to you or him.