# Dealing with new noises and stimuli after moving house



## orestis (Aug 26, 2013)

Hi all,

we finally moved house yesterday and now suddenly there are all those new noises that Mucho has to be acquainted with and stop barking his head off.

What gets him is the new elevator sound - the elevator here is much busier than our old one, and there are constantly bangs and clicks etc - every 3-4 minutes.

Mucho usually loves people arriving announced to the house and he will run excited and tail wagging to the door when the doorbell rings, but we've noticed he will bark and tense and run to the door whenever an unknown sound comes from it. 

What's the best way to condition him to stop worry about the elevator noises? Preferably without treats since he's on a restricted diet after eating a couple of Ibuprofen pills last week (no worries, he's fine!)


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## davetgabby (Dec 29, 2007)

classical conditioning here's an example http://www.patriciamcconnell.com/sites/default/files/Bark 2008 Sep-Oct I'm Okay, You're Okay.pdf


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## SJ1998 (Feb 4, 2013)

Great info, thank you


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## Naturelover (Nov 30, 2013)

I'd be a little hard-pressed for how to quickly accomplish this without treats, but if he is very food-motivated you could use some of his regular portion of meal-time food to do training. 

One thing that jumps to mind as a specific thing to do in conjunction with the classical conditioning that Dave T has posted, is to actually use your phone (if you have a smartphone or ipad with the capability to record sound via voice memos) to record the elevator sounds that are freaking your pup out, then play them in the house at a volume low enough that he hears it but it doesn't elicit a reaction. You can provide a treat or bit of meal each time you play the sound, and slowly increase the volume. So you are rewarding him for hearing the sound but not reacting. You never want to increase it so much that he starts reacting- just enough that he slowly starts to associate that noise with treats and tolerates the increase in noise level up to the real deal eventually. And of course if you can avoid the real elevator in the meantime, great, if not, provide a ton of very high value treats when you do need to go near it or into it if that bothers him.

Does that make sense? Pretty much same idea as what is posted above, just with specifics for your situation.


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