Stop doing this immediately.

When I walk a dog — my own or a client’s — I often encounter other dogs barking at us from behind fences. That’s pretty normal canine behavior, and I think most dog owners, if we’re honest, will admit that we consider that a feature, not a bug, because it helps protect our homes from intruders.

Barking doesn’t offend me. What does offend me is performative shouting that reinforces obnoxious behavior while jeopardizing the owner’s relationship with the dog. If you yell at your dog for barking at me every single time I walk past your house, I know two things about you:

1. You don’t really want your dog to stop barking.
2. But you want me to think you do.

Screaming at a dog for barking is counterproductive. At best, you reinforce the behavior (by amping up the excitement for a dog who is already agitated); at worst, you risk scaring your dog and giving him a reason not to trust you (by yelling at him for no apparent reason).

If you truly don’t want a dog to bark at pedestrians, you need to train him not to bark at pedestrians. There are several ways to approach this, but your basic options are to correct the behavior you don’t want; teach the dog an alternate behavior that you do want; or both. If you decide to correct the unwanted behavior, make sure you deliver a meaningful consequence — for instance, a high-frequency sound or an e-collar vibration — rather than just yelling and expecting the dog to calm down while you’re making a lot of exciting noise.

If you want your dog to bark at pedestrians, that’s a perfectly valid decision, too; just own it, and don’t yell at the dog for it, because that isn’t fair.