Barking When Someone Comes Into The House

My wife is a piano teacher and teaches out of our home. So we have young students coming into our home several times per day. Our Aussie, Jasper (2 years old) is a wonderful dog and very friendly to the students and genuinely seems to enjoy the kids. Our issue is that when they first enter he barks his head off. And not an excited happy bark, a bark like he feels threatened. After a while (sometimes a couple minutes) he calms down and is best friends with the students.

Often times in the afternoon when he knows the students are coming at some point, and my wife is getting ready for students he'll start barking at seemingly random stuff - barking at the door or window. And this is the only time Jasper EVER barks. Excited or otherwise. He's a totally quiet dog, except if someone enters the house, despite it happening repeatedly, multiple times per day. We've tried using a leash, we've tried distracting him by having him do tricks for the kids, we've tried positive reinforcement once he finally shuts up.

If I happen to be home and I have him in another part of the house, blocked from the front door when the students enter, then I release him and let him go to the piano room, he's totally fine. It just seems to be when anyone enters the front door when he's there. We'd prefer not to always crate him during lessons. Any ideas? We've got some neighborhood kids that I'm sure would be happy to help out by knocking on the door or coming in our house if we could think of something else to try.

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