Barking up a Storm

Cody has taken it upon himself to voice his opinions more vocally. In the past week, he has been barking more and more.

Of course, there are the standard weird things he's been barking at. For example, he's suddenly nervous around pumpkins (the person who lives above me dropped their jack o'lattern accidentally in my backyard. Cody would not stop barking at it until I cleaned up all the pieces.) Also, there are a few large stuffed dogs in one of my co-workers offices. The stuffed dogs have always been there, but he doesn't frequent that office very often. Apparently he's forgotten that these dogs don't move (much less attack) and he was cowering and barking at them.

There are other barking occasions that make me more nervous. He rarely barked at people and never children. A few weeks ago, two kids were walking by and Cody was nervous enough to bark at the kids (I assume he sensed their fear since he normally is friendly towards kids). He didn't attack, and actually cowered a little bit, but it made the kids cry (which made me feel bad). I have been using the Bitter Apple product more often, but it seems to have less of an effect. The bark collar that we used to use doesn't work because he it has no affect on him.

He never used to be this nervous before, but I'm definitely going to watch out for correcting this behavior.