How to Help a Dog With Barrier Frustration

Barrier frustration is a common problem for dogs that live indoors. When a dog cannot move beyond the barriers of his home or leash to interact with other creatures, the excitement he feels towards those new things builds up into serious frustration. Barrier frustration can stress your dog out and lead to aggressive behavior over time, so it is best to address this problem early or prevent it altogether. Barrier frustration is one of the more straightforward dog behavior problems to fix.

Instructions

    • 1

      Take your dog for a walk each day and allow him to interact with the people and animals you encounter. While the initial greetings may be excited and explosive, once your dog has a strong habit of socialization he will calm down considerably.

    • 2

      Enroll your dog in a group training class. You can teach obedience at home, but the socialization with different people and dogs in a group class is invaluable for treating your pet's frustration.

    • 3

      Bring your pup to an off-leash park and let him run around making new friends and investigating the landscape. Barrier frustration is largely caused by an inability to explore the world beyond fences and windows.

    • 4

      Reward your dog for demonstrating good behavior, either when he calmly greets new people or ignores a passer-by out the window. You can build any behavior into your dog's default action by rewarding the right actions and ignoring the wrong ones.