Hellobee Boards

I second Dandelion's response!
We have not one, but two yippy dogs, and our 3 week old son doesn't stir at all when they bark in his ear. One dog barks at the leaves, the wind, people sneezing... you name it. Hopefully, your LO will be used it by the time he/she arrives!

My friend has a big dog that barks at every-freaking-thing...and doesn't stop. Once she had her baby (now 8 weeks old), the dog continued to bark, but the baby never even flinched. She'll (baby) be passed out, the dog will start freaking out, and...nothing. I vote that they get used to it!

We're working on this with one of our little dogs too. She loses her mind in her crate when we come home every day, and I'm worried that we'll be carrying a sleeping baby in and she'll wake him up. Its reassuring to hear that they get used to it before they arrive!

Barking is tough because it becomes so ingrained and because the barking itself can be very rewarding. Bark collars also don't always solve the problem. Some dogs will just bark anyway even though the collar is uncomfortable (mine did this), or with a shock collar they'll learn there is a few second space between shocks and will bark once to set it off then a ton of times in the space between. When my dog was barking we tried a citronella collar, but all it did was leave my apartment smelling like citrus because he barked through it. The only nice thing about that was that I knew if he barked while I wasn't home. What worked was addressing the underlying problem /reason for the barking. In our case, it was separation anxiety and the barks cleared up after that. She sounds like she could be alert barking or fear barking or maybe yips when bored. Whatever you do, try not to reinforce it either by yelling or by coddling. That can work in the short run, but cause issues later. You could try teaching a command like "quiet", and praising her a lot when she's not barking. Some people also have success training their dog to bark on command, because then you can turn it off and on yourself.

There's a chance it won't bug your baby, though. We live near train tracks, which I was afraid would wake LO, but he completely tunes it out. He also ignores DH's alarm in the morning.