How do you go about teaching a dog the difference between telling us there is a noise outside and trying to 'take care of the problem' himself?

We want Max to tell us that he hears something outside but then leave it for us to deal with if necessary. But at the moment he hears a noise and barks and then gets a bit wound up running from the window to the door and back again. While doing this he keeps barking, we tell him to stop and he does for about 10 seconds, then barks again.

How do we teach him that we will take care of this as the pack leaders? Is it just a by product of being the pack leader in every other situation? - we are still working on that by the way, I suspect Max is the type of dog who will require constant reminding that we are in charge.

Can something like telling him to stop barking then one of us going outside 'to check it out' teach him that he doesn't need to try to get out there to make sure it's ok? I'm assuming that letting him outside will only make the problem worse - we have never done that.

Or on the other hand should he not be barking at all and just be ignoring any strange sounds because the pack leader will take care of anything like that and he shouldn't need to react at all?

I'm going to take a shot at this and say that if you want him to alert initially you will reward the behavior, then once he has barked a little or whatever it is he does, take him somplace else and use a little basic OB like down to get him to settle down and focuses on you, then reward for that.

My dog used to rush the door and as Matthew says that is poor pack behaviour. The key is to work the dog with all the doors in the house that lead to the outside.

I initially trained this with a prong on the dead ring and someone behind with a drag line standing on it. Then used a 3rd person to ring or knock at the door for best affect. If she went for the door she self corrected on the prong. I'd ignore her and then reward her for her staying in her down.

Really all I did was once she alerted I'd recognize that. Now when it happens is go to the door and put her into a down before I opened the door. It works best if there is some sort of barrier like a carpet or a entranceway that puts up a perceived barrier (doesn't need to be real). If she breaks the down before your release command and still rushes the door then you correct.

It didn't take long to train at all ...