How to Stop a Puppy Barking: Find the Reinforcer

Work out which of four things the barking is buying the puppy — attention, distance from something frightening, release from a barrier, or a need you have not met yet — then remove that consequence completely and pay a different behaviour, because a bark that stops working stops being repeated.

When puppies start barking

Vocalising develops with hearing. The MSD Veterinary Manual's developmental timeline puts the transitional period at 13 to 19 days, when the eyes and ears open and social interaction with littermates increases, and the socialisation period from 19 days to 12 weeks, when puppies get bolder about the world.

No veterinary reference we could find publishes a week number for a first bark, and the sites that give you one are guessing. What is documented is the order: hearing first, then social play, then a vocal repertoire that grows through the socialisation period.

The practical point is about reinforcement history rather than age. A puppy that started barking last week has done it a handful of times, and a behaviour with a short history is far easier to change than one with a year behind it.

The four things barking buys a puppy

Barking is one behaviour with four different pay-offs, and the fix is chosen by pay-off rather than by sound. Getting this wrong is why one household's method fails in another.

Attention. The MSD manual lists attention-seeking barking alongside food begging and object stealing as normal behaviour that "arises from inadvertent reinforcement" — the puppy barks, a human looks, speaks or moves, and the bark worked.

Distance. Vocalisation is listed among the behavioural signs of acute fear and anxiety, together with a low body posture and displacement behaviours such as yawning and lip-licking. A puppy barking at a visitor from behind the sofa is asking for space, not attention.

Release. Frustration, in MSD's glossary, arises when an animal is motivated to complete a sequence and cannot — the dog on the wrong side of a door or fence. The barking is aimed at the barrier.

A need. Elimination, food, sleep. A puppy under twelve weeks that barks in a pen at 3am usually needs the garden, and that one is not a training problem at all.

How to stop a puppy barking

Work one pay-off at a time. Every step below assumes you have already excluded fear and unmet needs, because neither of those responds to any of this.

Log the ten seconds either side of the bark

Write down where the puppy was, what it could see or hear, what you did, and how long the barking lasted. Three days of that log tells you which of the four pay-offs you are dealing with, which is the only decision on this page that matters.

Remove the pay-off completely, not mostly

If the bark is buying attention, then eye contact, "quiet", a sigh and walking over are all attention. Turn your back and become uninteresting the instant it starts, and stay that way until the noise stops.

Expect it to get worse before it stops

The MSD manual warns owners to be prepared for the intensity of a behaviour to increase before it extinguishes, a phase it calls an extinction burst. Days two and three are the loudest days you will have, and they are the evidence that the plan is working.

Pay a behaviour the puppy cannot bark through

Reward silence the moment it happens, then reward going to a mat, settling, or holding a chew. MSD calls this response substitution, and without it you have only told the puppy what stops working rather than what starts.

Meet the need before the puppy has to ask

Take the puppy out before the barking, feed before the barking, and put the chew down before you take the phone call. A need that is met on your schedule never becomes a behaviour that is rehearsed on the puppy's.

Why "just ignore it" usually fails

It fails on the fourth day, and for a documented reason. MSD is explicit that any form of intermittent reinforcement — "even occasional petting of the dog in response to its jumping" — will prolong the behaviour, and that valuable rewards, a long history and intermittent reinforcement all increase resistance to extinction.

Then comes the sentence most articles skip. "Giving in will make extinction even more difficult as the animal learns that higher-intensity behaviours achieve the desired outcome."

So the household that ignores barking for three days and then shouts on day four has not failed to train the puppy. It has trained a louder puppy, and the next attempt starts from a worse position than the first.

That is also why ignoring is only half a plan. Extinction removes a behaviour; it does not supply one, and a puppy with nothing to do will find another way to ask.

What not to use on a barking puppy

Anti-bark collars, spray collars, shaker cans and water bottles all appear on AVSAB's red-flag list for choosing a trainer, and its board restated the position in 2025: aversive methods "should not be used under any circumstances", and AVSAB "does not support the use of aversives in any context, regardless of the tools used or the trainer's level of experience."

The mechanical problem is that a punisher stops a behaviour without teaching one, so the puppy that cannot bark still cannot get your attention and will try something else. The welfare problem is that the punishment gets associated with whatever the puppy was looking at, which is often a visitor or another dog.

The explanation you will still meet — that the puppy is challenging you, testing you, or trying to run the house — is not supported by the clinical literature. MSD states that "despite persistence of the idea in popular culture, a dominance hierarchy does not describe dogs' social relationships with each other or with human companions", and AVSAB lists "boss, alpha, pack leader" as language to walk away from. Barking is not a claim to rank; it is a behaviour with a consequence.

One more exclusion, and it is medical. A review of veterinary behaviourists' caseloads found between 28% and 82% of behaviour patients showed signs of pain, so a puppy that barks or yelps when a specific area is touched gets an exam before it gets a protocol.

When do puppies start barking?

Hearing comes first, at 13 to 19 days, and vocalising develops across the socialisation period from 19 days to 12 weeks. We could not find a veterinary source that names the week of a first bark, so we are not going to invent one — and neither should the pages that do.

Will my puppy grow out of barking?

Not on its own, because the behaviour is maintained by what happens after it rather than by age. Barking that reliably produces attention, distance or release gets more practised as the puppy gets older, which is the difference between a nuisance at four months and the entrenched habit covered in our guide to how to get a dog to stop barking.

Should I use an anti-bark collar on a puppy?

No. AVSAB's 2021 position statement recommends reward-based methods for all dog training including the treatment of behaviour problems, and its 2025 board statement names electronic collars, prong collars and other physical or psychological punishment as tools that should not be used under any circumstances.

My puppy barks in the crate — is that the same problem?

Usually not. Crate barking has its own differential — incomplete conditioning to the crate, confinement anxiety, distress at being alone, or a puppy that needs to eliminate — and the protocol is in our guide to crate training a dog. If the noise is a whine or a howl rather than a bark, start with dog training for whining instead, because frustration and distress vocalisations point somewhere different.

What if the barking only happens at night?

Night barking has a separate list of causes, including some that are medical in an older dog, and it is covered in our guide to dog barking at night. For a puppy, the first thing to rule out is the simplest: it needs to go out, and it is telling you so.

Related guides

• my dog won't stop barking — Six causes, one method, and the two barking symptoms that are medical.
• dog barking night — Night barking has three ages and three answers.
• puppy training basics — The order matters more than the list.
• dog training for whining — Whining has four different causes and four different fixes.

Every guide we have written is on the dog training guide index.

Sources

1. Behavior Problems of Dogs — MSD Veterinary Manual (Merck), professional edition, 2025.
2. Social Behavior of Dogs — MSD Veterinary Manual (Merck), professional edition, 2025.
3. Treatment of Behavior Problems in Animals — MSD Veterinary Manual (Merck), professional edition, 2025.
4. Position Statement on Humane Dog Training — American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB), 2021.
5. AVSAB Board Statement on Humane Dog Training and Trainer Endorsement — American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB), 2025.
6. Pain and Problem Behavior in Cats and Dogs — Animals 10(2):318 (Mills, Demontigny-Bedard, Gruen, Klinck, McPeake et al.), 2020.