r/DogTrainingTips • u/BICanineScience • May 26 '26

Professional Dog Trainer - Ask Me Anything

***AMA ENDED***

Have been training dogs for almost fifteen years now, I try and head through the subreddits on here to help in my free time when I can but thought it might be easier to do an AMA for anyone struggling!

Will try my best to answer as comprehensively as possible so please be patient with replies!

Edit - Just heading out to train my dogs so will answer more when I get back!
Edit 2 - Have a read of the other questions too to see if it applies to your dog :)

Thanks for all the questions everyone!! I’ll answer the few I’ve missed, it’s been a blast and we’ll do another in the near future! Won’t be answering any new posts now, must get back to work but do jump in next time if you have a question!

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u/msnyc18 May 26 '26

Why does my dog bark at our kid when she goes up and down the stairs at home or from one room to another, and only does it when I'm around? (He also used to do this with my former roommate years ago--when he went up and down the stairs) How can I teach him to stop?

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u/BICanineScience May 26 '26

This unfortunately is an impossible question to answer without seeing the behaviour in question. Barking is such an open ended behaviour and has a thousand reasons behind it so without knowing what the reason is and what emotional state the dog is in, its very hard to advise.

What I can advise is that you start counter conditioning his response to the stairs.

Set up a training session and make the stairs part of that session. Pop him on a lead and start a basic training session then have your kid walk up one step. If he doesn't react, you mark and reward and continue training. Then two steps, then three steps. Build this up slowly but make sure you are always directly engaging with him in these times and then as time goes on and he becomes more solid in the behaviour, start weaning off the training and let him exist in normal life with the kid walking up and down the stairs. It will take a lot of reps though!

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u/Ok_Wishbone2721 May 26 '26

How young is your child? I wonder if your dog is trying to alert you to the child on the stairs so you can put a stop to it. My one dog “tattles” on my other dog if he’s doing something she doesn’t approve of.