Summary
Dogs whine to communicate various needs: appeasement, greeting, seeking attention, anxiety, or alerting. To stop it, identify the cause. For appeasement, build confidence. For greetings, teach “quiet” or distract. Ignore attention-seeking whining and reward calm behavior. Address anxiety with professional help and calming aids if needed. Acknowledge alert whining and reassure your dog. For nighttime whining, ensure potty breaks, snacks, and a comfortable sleeping space. When crate training, ignore whining, use a properly sized crate, create positive associations, and maintain a potty schedule. Patience, consistency, and positive reinforcement are key.
Why Do Dogs Whine?
Dogs don’t know how to speak, so they use bodily movements or actions to make their owner understand what they are going through. As shown below, we can categorize the dogs’ whining in the four into parts disc.
Appeasing Behavior
The appeasing behavior of dogs usually happens when they interact with new people because they get a bit nervous while interacting with unknown people. In contrast, they also whine when their tail is tucked and their haze is averted.
Greeting Behavior
Some dogs are officially trained by their owner to whine when some guests appear in their house. So, the whining of a dog when the guests arrive is a type of greeting behavior.
Attention-Seeking Behavior
If the dog owners ignore the pet, they will also whine continuously because attention and love are all the pet wants from its owner. So, the whining of a pet that is kept alone in a room is a type of attention-seeking behavior.
Anxiety-Releasing Behavior
Sometimes, the dog may also whine continuously due to anxiety and stress, which may happen due to various situations. If it is suffering from some disorders that are causing pain to them, they will whine.
Making Alert Behavior
We all know that the sensing capability of dogs and their hearing capacity is much higher than that of humans. So, the whining of dogs at night can also be a sign of something unwanted, like the appearance of a thief in the home.
How to Stop a Dog from Whining?
After discussing the different types of situations when a dog whines, we will now discuss the steps to stop a dog from whining in that particular situation.
Stopping a Dog Whining in an Appeasing Behavior
The appeasement whining behavior of the dog usually depends on the type of people they interact with. If the people your dog is interacting with are causing trouble to the pet, like tucking his tail, crouching over the back, and holding its ears from the backside, it causes severe pain, making them whine.
To stop the appeasing whining behavior of your dog, you have to build some confidence in the pet, which will help it fight back against the people who are causing him trouble.
To create the dog’s confidence, the owner has to conduct regular reward-based training sessions, including games like tug and fetch and sports like dog agility.
This will help the dog fight against this act as he will get trained on how to face when his tail gets tucked and many other situations. So this is the way by which you can stop a dog from whining in an appeasing behavior,
Stopping a Dog Whining While Greeting Others
Whining dogs when guests arrive is a lovely gesture to welcome your guests, but it feels good at first, and excess of it could sound more pleasant. A dog’s excessive whining during guests’ arrival might be due to a lack of training.
To stop a dog whining due to guests’ arrival, all you can do is make him familiar with the cue word quiet so that he can understand when you make the command calm.
Or, if your dog is not friendly with a cue word, you can try to divert their attention from the guest’s arrival by giving them their favorite toy and feeding them with their favorite treats. This is an effective way to stop a dog from whining while guests arrive.
Stopping a Dog Whining to Seek Attention
If the dog cannot get sufficient attention from his owner due to his busy schedule, he may often whine to get some attention from the owner.
To stop a dog from whining about seeking attention from the owner, the owner can reward him when he stays quiet. Doing this can make the pet understand that keeping silent is better than whining about seeking attention from the owner.
The best way of stopping a dog from whining is to ignore the pet while it whins to get your attention and get closer to it while it stops whining. This will make the pet realize that staying calm and waiting for the partner is better than whining continuously.
Stopping a Dog Whining in Anxiety
It’s pretty difficult to stop a dog from whining in anxiety because the owner must first understand the reason behind the dog’s anxiousness and remove it to prevent the dog from whining continuously.
Dogs usually lose control over their behaviors when they go through extreme stress. The only way to stop a dog from whining in anxiety is to take proper medications from a well-certified veterinarian.
You can also use CBD oil as a temporary solution as it will calm the dog under pressure, leading to the dog stopping whining.
Stopping a Dog Whining to Make their Owners Alert
Sometimes, the dog may also whine by becoming aware of an unknown person’s arrival at home.
To stop a dog from whining about alerting its owner, all the owner has to make him realize that nothing wrong is happening and introduce the pet to the guests who arrive home. Giving the pet hugs and cuddles to keep his nervousness away also works wonders in this case.
How Can You Stop a Dog from Whining at Night?
The whining of a dog at night can be due to various reasons like potty time, hunger for snacks, an uncomfortable place to sleep, and many other issues.
If you are facing difficulties sleeping at night due to the continuous whining of your dog, then you can follow the steps below to stop a dog’s whining at Potty Time at Night
If you realize your dog can’t hold his pee for more than 3 to 4 hours, you must introduce late-night potty time into your dog’s schedule. It can be beneficial in stopping your dog from whining at night if the potty is the main reason behind its whining.
Keep Snacks in the Bowl at Night
If your dog has a habit of eating within a gap of a few hours, then all you can do is keep some snacks in the dog’s bowl at night so that he can get free from late-night hunger strikes.
Give a Comfortable Place to Sleep
If you let your pet sleep on the floor at night, it can be the primary reason behind its whining. To avoid this, you can give him a comfortable place like a cushion or let him sleep on the sofa or a couch.
Keep them Near You at Night.
If your dog is a pup, keeping the pet near you at night was suggested. This is because, during the night,
the puppies often get scared by a bit of sound and start whining like the owner is sleeping, which can even make your pup afraid at night. So, keeping the dog near you at night will stop it from complaining.
These steps are well-researched in terms of the behavior of dogs at night. So, if a dog owner wants to stop his dog from whining at night, the owner can entirely rely upon these steps.
How Do You Get a Dog to Stop Whining in a Crate?
If you are a dog owner who wants to keep your dog in a crate, you might have come to a point where your dog keeps whining. The steps that a dog owner can follow to stop a dog from whining in a crate are discussed below:
- Ignore the pet whenever it wins in the crate to make him realize it’s not a good option.
- Pick a perfect-sized crate for the dog so the pet doesn’t get uncomfortable.
- Make your puppy familiar with the crate so that he gets comfortable in it.
- Always maintain a frequency in the dog’s potty breaks, and try never to miss any.
These steps are practical and based on experiments on dogs of various breeds. So, a dog owner can follow these steps to stop a dog from whining in a crate.
With this, we have put on all the informative things to clear your doubts regarding stopping a dog from whining, and we hope you have understood the facts.