Barking at night? Anyone else's dog?

[Chicagocanine]

Bianca tends to be a lot more alert at night. During the day she will sometimes bark if people walk too close to the house but at night she will bark/growl/lunge at the windows when anyone passes by outside no matter how close or far away. Last night for example at about 4 am she was barking at someone through the living room windows for at least 10 minutes straight.
Does anyone else have a dog who does this? I'm not sure what to do about it... I don't want her to not bark at all but I'd prefer if she only alerted to people who were actually on our property.
She even barks at my next-door neighbors if they walk through their backyards. I asked on of my neighbors if they would like to meet her because I thought if she knew them she might stop barking at them, but they declined.

[VectorSketcher]

Well, generally at night if people walk to close to our house both of mine go nuts I have been working on them to calm down when I tell them to 'quiet', which has been going really well. For me it is fine if they bark at first but I want them to calm down once I acknowledge there is someone there, the sidewalk is really close to our front window and garage so I do not mind them alerting me at night. And after a certain time they both go to bed with me, and they are quiet the rest of the night unless someone tries to break in (which has happened before).

As far as the backyard my female will bark at the neighbors to the left of me, but they have been working with me and her so she is slowly starting to recognize them, she has stopped barking at the ones on the right of me as they tend to talk to her over the fence and she has learned to recognize they are not the 'enemy' but friends instead. Too bad your neighbor is not willing to meet her, I bet that would help a great deal with the barking in the backyard. I do also use the distraction method with her if she decides not to stop barking (usually at birds in our backyard), I have had great success with this method as well.

[littledmc17]

Brady does the same thing especially when DH isn't home
he is in protective mode

they don't bark unless they have reasone to

[Chicagocanine]

Originally Posted By: littledmc
they don't bark unless they have reasone to

That's true, Bianca has a reason. My only problem is that her reason is "There is a strange person walking on the public sidewalk past our house!"
I wish she wouldn't bark for that reason because I don't mind if people walk there, but she does... I think that since she lived in a more rural area in her previous home she most likely is used to the property line being much further away from the house so she considers the public street part of our property.

[Lixx]

An alert bark or two would be all I would expect and tolerate in that situation. I want my dogs to tell me if there's possibly of something there, but I also want them to 'disarm' once I have told them it's of no concern. Very rarely have my dogs ever barked through the night; usually one loud 'woof' to wake me and then they wait for me to assess the situation. If it's nothing I say 'leave it', if I'm not sure what caused the alert I ask them to 'show me'.
Perhaps teaching her an 'off switch' would help. In the situation mentioned it seems she feels she must handle it herself and therefore does not stop until the 'threat' has walked out of sight. It should be up to you to decide what is a threat and what isn't, not the dog.

[Chicagocanine]

Originally Posted By: Lixx An alert bark or two would be all I would expect and tolerate in that situation. I want my dogs to tell me if there's possibly of something there, but I also want them to 'disarm' once I have told them it's of no concern. Very rarely have my dogs ever barked through the night; usually one loud 'woof' to wake me and then they wait for me to assess the situation. If it's nothing I say 'leave it', if I'm not sure what caused the alert I ask them to 'show me'.
Perhaps teaching her an 'off switch' would help. In the situation mentioned it seems she feels she must handle it herself and therefore does not stop until the 'threat' has walked out of sight. It should be up to you to decide what is a threat and what isn't, not the dog.

She does listen to me if she's barking at the window when am in the room with her-- if I tell her to stop barking or to go lay down, she will.

The problem is at night when I am in bed, if she sees someone outside she will keep barking until they are gone because she's the only one awake (there's no one else there to tell her if something is a threat or not.)