See Spot bark

I thought i'd start this blog with something familiar to any maremma owner. Especially, like ourselves, an urban maremma owner.

Barking. Abstreifen. El raspar, even.

Kyle, our first maremma, likes to bark. To be more correct - he just barks when and where he thinks it's neccessary, which is pretty much all of the time. It is part-and-parcel of owning a maremma. It's also part (or all of) the reason that we have our second maremma. He's a 'rescue' dog - and apparently he barked alot.


Well - duh. Take a maremma, place him or her in an urban environment and leave it all day and bingo! One mentally and (with very little effort) physically abused little white bear. But, of all the things any potential owner of this breed needs to know it's that they bark. They growl, snort, talk and occasionally burp - but they especially bark. So he barked incessently. Especially at the postman. Well - who doesn't I suppose. It's their beady little eyes. But anyway ...

They bark to tell everyone (and especially you, dear pack), that this is my house, my family, my land and my red zone. Come near, and I bark. Come close and I bark and snarl and leap on anything appropriate to see you even better to bark at.

But they also bark at - ANYTHING. Flowers, feathers, birds, changes in their environment. It's a long, and constantly changing list. And while some of it is charming, if you're not prepared to live with a barky bark, don't even think of a maremma.

Does anyone have a specific trigger point for their maremmas barking? Our rescue maremma - Magic, barks at whistling, especially on tv. Weird, but true.