# Barking at strangers



## Ana (Oct 3, 2013)

I have a problem with my 15m old male vizsla . When we go for a walk, when he's off leash and whenever he see a stranger he would run towards him and start barking and running around the person and won't obey to any of commands I give him. 
I don't think it's aggressive behavior, because if the person is not scared of him, he usually, after 5,10min, calm himself and gets in a playful mood. 
This never happens with strangers who also have a dog, and rarely when we're walking with another dog. (So if he's in a company of another dog he is most of a time well behaving.)
On leash, he used to be quite uncertain, but now is much better and he would approach to a stranger and let him pet him and play with him.
What should I do when he's running around and barking on strangers?


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## hobbsy1010 (Jun 4, 2011)

Hi Ana,

Welcome to the forum, I'd like to say that they grow out of it but mine haven't!!!!

I have a 20 mth old bitch and a 4 yr old dog all intact.

Before we got the bitch we thought we were on top of this problem with the dog! On her arrival she tended to start the barking off, which in tail started the dog off barking in public!

You will read a lot on here about trying to socialise your pup as much as possible on here and on the whole the advice is good.

But when he is walking free at distance you will find this hard to control!

My advice to you while he is still young is to try and call him into you if off the lead, if you see a situation where he is going to encounter another dog/person.

This takes a great deal of vigilance on your part but get him to come back to you firstly, keep him to heal while walking past the other dog/person.

You WILL conquer this with repetition, he will start to check back with you eventually out of instinct!

But repetition is the key to this! 

Hope this helps 

Good luck

Hobbsy


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## hobbsy1010 (Jun 4, 2011)

PS.

Happy to give you your first LIKE!!! 

Hobbsy


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## Ana (Oct 3, 2013)

hobbsy1010 said:


> My advice to you while he is still young is to try and call him into you if off the lead, if you see a situation where he is going to encounter another dog/person.
> 
> This takes a great deal of vigilance on your part but get him to come back to you firstly, keep him to heal while walking past the other dog/person.
> 
> You WILL conquer this with repetition, he will start to check back with you eventually out of instinct!


Thanks for the tip, but I've done that allready and it not solve the problem. Whenever I see a person or a dog (although he doesn't have any problems with other dogs) I call him and put a leash on and then he's OK with people walking by. 

For ex. yesterday, during a walk I saw a man so i kept my dog on a leash while walking towards a man. The man asked me some questions about the dog, so we approached him, I talk to a men, dog was well behaving - allowed being pet, wanted to play with the man. And after that introduction I took the leash off and dog was still well behaving, no problems whatsoever. 
But if I don't see a person, if the person appears suddenly, before I have time to call a dog to put a leash back on, he will bark and run around the person, and wont come when he's called. 

So, on leash-normal, off leash-crazy 

I'm still hoping this is something he will outgrown(?), cause this has limited the number of places when I can take him for a run and also it makes me very frustrated, especially if he's barking at kids. 
Am I just suppose to socialize him as much as I can when he's on leash and in time he would be much more comfortable around strangers and became able to be off leash when theres people near by? :-\


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## MilesMom (Jun 21, 2012)

Have you considered trying a training collar (E collar)? 

Miles used to do that too at strangers and would bark at kids biking/ playing because he was afraid of them. Now he's totally fine. Allowed 3 kids to pet him yesterday at the park, and we passed dozens on our off leash trail run no problem and I attribute it to the E collar allowing us to get him back in our control with a potential bark situation so we could control and manage the interactions.


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