What is the best way to teach a puppy not to bark?

That is a hard one and I have seen lots of suggestions… everything from just ignoring him to teaching the dog "Speak" and then teaching it "quiet"… but I don’t like this method because when my dog sees an especially tastey treat being offered to him he will spontaneously go through his entire repertoire of tricks… and I don’t want him thinking he can bark for treats.

Another method I have heard is to spray him in the face with water and say "quiet" every time he starts to open his mouth for a bark… and someone once suggested mixing the water half & half with orange listerine since dogs don’t like the taste. I haven’t tried the listerine mix, but this mostly works with our dog unless he is being extremely playful and then he will turn it into a game.

OK… now what works best for us… Our terrier mix is now 2 years old and still gets excited easily and starts barking. A few things work for us… first of all we have him trained to go to his bed as a kind of "time out." When we tell him to go to bed he knows it is time to calm down. This one normally works when he is just being generally annoying… it doesn’t always work if he is in one of those crazy moods that result from not getting enough exercise.

When he is too excited to listen to our command to go to bed we move on to a different method:

Whenever we put a leash on him he normally stops acting crazy and submits to us. We have a slip leash from the vet’s office (leash with a metal ring on the end instead of a clip, it loops through the ring to form a slip collar) that works best for this… since we can kind of lasso him and then slip it to the top of his neck. Usually he will submit and be calm as soon as we put it on, if not we give a couple quick correcting tugs on the leash with a correcting sound like "tsh" or a buzzer sound or a simple "no".

When he is being especially bad we make him lay on his side and submit to us until we tell him he can get up. We normally wait until his breathing slows down and his body relaxes a bit. I really suggest watching the Dog Whisperer to learn how to do this. Crazy as it sounds, that show will definitely help you learn how to make your dog understand you are the boss.

Although… the very first thing you need to do before anything else is make sure he gets enough exercise! A dog with too much energy is what leads to most problems. This one is a constant struggle for us though, since our dog has 50x more energy than both of us put together.

They will teach you how to be a leader, as in leader of the pack in dog behavior terms. She will start to settle more as she see’s that someone besides her is in charge. Someone who will lead her and protect her. Until you have those skills she is going to be a bit nutty. She’s a young but not to young to start. The sooner the better. After having taught my dogs the basic commands sit, stay, down, come and heel I then taught them the command "quiet." It sounds so much better than shut up, LOL. When my dogs start barking all I have to do is say is a sharp quiet and then I follow it with a soft "good quiet." Then they understand that they have pleased me. They want to please us more than anything in the world. I would also suggest the book The Monks of New Skeete. They actually make their living training dogs and while I believe in going to a trainer for lessons, this book is wonderful and speaks directly to the concept of leadership. I harp on that only because that is what dogs understand and it goes directly back to wolf pack behavior. Yes, we have domesticated them but it’s in the genes. Good luck and if I can be of any assistance just let me know.