Keeping Your Dog Quiet While Working from Home

With more and more dog-owners working remotely full-time, it can be hard to keep up with being a dog-parent and a responsible employee. Plus, with you being home more often, your dog may become used to this and think that it’s around-the-clock playtime. So how do you keep your workspace quiet while working from home with your dog?

Quieting Your Barking Dog

Most dogs adore attention, especially from their owners, so it’s not surprising when they exhibit these behaviors when their owners are seemingly always at home now. A lot of dogs tend to act out for attention just because of boredom. So how do you stop this when you’re working from home?

Exercise

With more free time on your hands outside of the office setting, you may have more opportunities to take off on a walk around the neighborhood. Getting in as little as 30 minutes of outdoor exercise a day is extremely beneficial for your pooch and you! It also helps release any pent-up excitement of being stuck in the house all day.

Enrichment

You may find it useful to engage your dog by teaching them a new trick, practicing old ones, or breaking open a new toy. This will help stimulate them mentally and physically while also curing their boredom.

Making Time For Affection

Your dog may be feeling ignored while you’re working. From their perspective, you’re at home, but you aren’t paying attention to them and they don’t understand why. Try spending a few minutes during work time to love on your pup or make sure someone else in your household is filling in for you while you get your tasks done.

Turn A Blind Eye?

It can be hard to ignore your furry friend, especially when they’re barking at you to play with them. But engaging in this behavior might do more harm than good.

Ignoring The Barking

Ignoring your dog’s barks can seem extremely difficult and not productive, but giving in to them demanding attention will only reinforce this behavior. After a few days, your dog should get the message and tone down or stop the attention-seeking behavior.

Refrain From Negative Reactions

Yelling or scolding will temporarily make your dog stop, but this is still a reaction, and to them, their attention barking worked because you verbally acknowledged it. Try waiting until barking dies down then give them positive reinforcement to praise their calm behavior. This is the type of attention dog-owners should reward.

Change Behaviors

Sometimes physically tiring your dog out just won’t work, especially if you have an active breed or a young, playful puppy. But, mentally stimulating them might do the trick.

Interactive Play

Puzzle toys are a great tool for mental stimulation. They help enrich the mind and can sometimes provide a rewarding treat to reinforce curious play.

Chew Toys

Chewing can be an extremely stimulating task for dogs. It helps relieve anxiety, stress, and is just plain fun for your canine companion. Rope toys, durable plush toys, and Kongs are all great options for your chewer.

Practice Patience

Learning how to navigate working from home with your dog may be tough, but it will get better as you both learn your boundaries and set time for playing and time for working! Remember that you are reinforcing certain behaviors by interacting with them. Putting bad behaviors to extinction is probably going to be difficult, but it’s not impossible.