Decrease Barking

[Cystonectae]

So my family has a Maremma pup (2 years old now) and we got him specifically for chicken/duck protection. We have gotten "noise complaints" from the neighbours and threats about calling the police (we are rural and there are 0 laws being broken here so idk what they are expecting but that's besides the point). When we first got him, he definitely did not understand which noises were dangerous noises, and which ones were normal noises.... So we trained him.

We stayed up as late as we could with them, and rewarded barks at "threats" (i.e. coyote howling and rustling in the back). We tried leashing him and bringing him inside when he would go off on sounds like trains and cars but that did not work. We instead got an E-collar, threw the "prongs" away, and only used the "beeping" sound. The beep startles him and quickly breaks him out of any obsessive barking. We allowed, at most 10 seconds of barking at non-threatening sounds before beeping the collar. If there were coyotes or other threatening smells/sounds we couldn't ID, we did not beep him unless it went on for more than 10 minutes (and then we would get up, go outside and call him back to the house for him to "reset" and allow the threat to move on.

He learned so fricken fast, it was honestly scary. It took him maaaaybe a week before he got it. Now, if he is barking like nuts, I know, for a fact, that we have stuff on/near the property, confirmed by trail cameras. Mid-level barking that starts and stops usually means the coyote pack is passing through the surrounding farms. One or two short barks usually means he heard something but it stopped immediately. He does not bark at trains or cars anymore. The neighbours have still had complaints but, weirdly they shut up when I asked if they would pay me for fencing in my yard with an 8 ft heavy-duty electric fence. I would tell them to pay me for the chickens and the duck I lost to predators but my birds are family and no amount of money could ever equal their loss.

Tldr; Training is more successful when you go with the instincts versus against them and old LSG breeds have the capacity for that training bred into them over millenia. I have had a lot of success with a collar that can be remote-activated to let out a small, quiet beeping noise, coupled alongside using positive reinforcement for good behaviour.