When a puppy barks....

When a puppy barks when it wants to play and barks when it is playing do you try and correct it? And I dont mean ocassional barking but constant barking. Hyde's bark is horrible, very loud and high pitched. I dont want my neighbors to complain. I know barking is a normal part of puppy behavior but do most puppies grow out of it or is it a behavior that people fix?
When I got Syd as a puppy a year or so ago she barked and she never grew out of it, and when she plays she sounds like an evil mean dog, but she is far from evil. I'm just worried Hyde may not grow out of the barking too. What should I do?

Oh i have tried the water sprayer with water and vinager, and he actually likes it! My boyfriend said he squirted him the other night and he was licking it off the floor. Weird!

 

Natalie is barky when she plays, she's always been and never grew out of it. I can get her quiet with a "quiet" cue most of the time but when I do this she stops playing too. I don't think she can be trained not to bark while playing...the barking seems to come naturally with the playing for her.

 

Yep, I don't think there is much you can do about that. You can try training "quiet" but that may stop the playing, as nern said. I wouldn't think you should squirt her or punish her, because she will associate that with playing and not just the barking part of it.

 

Do you mean the kind of barking they do if you're holding their ball and they're all excited 'asking' you to throw it? Or when they're barking/mock growling when playing with other dogs?

If it's the 'asking' type then you can limit it quite alot. It's taken a while but I've managed it with Floob. He's a yapper when we're playing with toys. He gets so wrapped up in it that he needs it to be quicker so if you stall for just 2 seconds he'd bark out of excitment. I stopped throwing everything till he'd sat quietly. You have to stick with it and not give in once as a weeks worth of doing it can be undone with one time of giving into the barking. You have to be quick, catch them the second they've stopped barking so they realise it's because they stopped barking and not that they got their way by barking.

Good luck!

 

Oh, yes! Nik is right. If it's THAT kind of barking, then definitely don't respond to it! If Nala gets impatient and barks at me to hurry up, I suddenly find something very interesting on the ceiling to look at....