[yorkietalkjilly]

You can train this out of him. It will take some time and some work but you'll both enjoy it. I'd start him on a good, fun, rewarding short series of obedience training sessions where he's amply rewarded with your pride in him, praise, smiles and treats for quickly obeying your commands. Keep the sessions very upbeat, fun and get him into learning - really working at it. Make one of the commands the "Bark" command. Once the dog is barking on command - easy to do - in time you can then introduce the "Quiet" command once he stops barking on his own and then teach him to stop on command. This command rewards him for stopping barking and he gets great praise and a special treat for it every single time he quietens on command. A dog can be trained to be just about as happy to stop barking as he is to bark if you work at it properly and truly motivate him. Also train him to "Watch me" so that he focuses only on your eyes for long periods of time for his praise and reward. This is a helpful command to use when a dog is out and about and getting excited in addition to the "Quiet".

In time, if you work hard at your part of it and keep it fun, patient, always loving and rewarding, he'll learn to always respond to you - even with cats, other dogs and exciting things going on in the background. If you do it right and make him want to obey you, it's great fun for the dog. They will do just about anything for us when the reward is great enough, your pride and happiness in them is very obvious to them and the training is fun and on a regular schedule. They come to adore the training sessions and will beg you for them.

In time and with enough fun repetition, dogs learn to automatically respond to what a good trainer wants because it's fun and VERY rewarding to them do so. They feed off a good trainer's very positive response to their performing the command and getting their praise and reward. Dogs love our smiles and pride when they get it right. And they work for food! Treats are like words of love to them!

After a good basic training regimen of a couple of months, training the dog outside and taking it through its commands in public places for a few minutes reinforces this and will teach your little one that no matter what, he's going to want to do what you ask him to 99% of the time, even when he's hyper and exciting things are happening with strangers coming and going, etc.

When training a dog in a public place, I always use only the best of treats - warm, boiled chicken or turkey hotdogs in a zipper treat pouch - and use my most enthusiastic voice and attitude to compete with the surrounding atmosphere for the dog's attention. You cannot scrimp on the treats here - use only the most enticing. But a well trained dog will have been conditioned to respond to his trainer and it won't take him much time to get into the groove.

Taking a pro-active approach to training a dog and getting him accustomed to ALWAYS listening to and obeying you is all that will help in a situation like this and it will take time to get there but dogs are such terrific quick studies and enthusiastic learners when sufficiently motivated by their trainer, it will happen! They can't help it - they are suckers for our approval when they've been trained to respond to us. And training a dog makes them the happiest, best pets ever. And you can use that training successfully to keep an excited, hyper dog quiet in public and avoid him ever becoming territorial because he'll have learned it's actually far more rewarding to him to please you, his trainer and pack leader. I'm not saying it's easy peasy, but it's lots of fun for the dog and for you and it really, really works.