Hi all. just a bit of advice needed about my 19 week old pug. he seems to have discovered his bark and barks at nothing and for no reason. as we speak, he is sat in the middle of the lounge, with his back to me just barking! his bark is very quiet and is quite endearing but he seems to be getting quite the little barker! there is nothing for him to bark at, as if there was the terriers would have got there first. He only has 1 eye, and i wonder sometimes if he sees things differently and this makes him bark. what do you think and whats the best course of action to take. thank you.

The best course of action depends on what you want him to do, rewarding his barking in any way, will encourage it, ignoring it will discourage it.

This sort of post always reminds me of a lady I used to know who had an incredibly noisy but lovely springer, who used to whine and howl the roof down when he wanted a ball throwing. This lady got herself a corgi pup, incredibly cute. In the mean time, she asked me if she should invest in a shock collar to stop her springer from making such a racket, and then told me how her lovely new corgi pup made endearing noises to beg for attention.

Whatever you want from your pup, make it clear, and make it an early lesson, ignore noises if you don't want them. If you want to encourage a particular noise, this can be done, but to be honest, I'd introduce it on your terms, not just because a pup has discovered it's voice.

Good luck, he sounds like a character

thanks sleeping lion, oh he certainly is quite a character. i did think it was for attention and have been ignoring it but i thought it would be focused on me or other members of the family if thats the case.

It depends pretty much on the character of your dog, they are individuals, and some are more demanding than others, some are open to receive attention from lots of people, and others are much more focussed towards one individual. That's across the board, no matter what the traits are for any breed, the can vary to quite a degree.

Why is the pup barking?

Excessive Barking: A Common Dog Behavior Problem indeed suggests "Attention-seeking barks are most often used by puppies to get you to focus your attention on them. They can become very insistent and hard to ignore, but ignore them we must". If that's the case, furthermore reward 3 seconds of quiet, with attention and try to decide how you want your puppy to signal it needs attention and reward that with attention, or the puppy will find causing trouble works.

Should a young dog bark from excitement reaching the park on walks for example, personally I would not worry overly. If it does develop into a pushy "Let's play!" during adolescence then only giving attention to the quiet dog and rewarding that, modifies the behaviour quickly because the play reward is so motivating.

If it's barking out of alarm, then going and investigate, then distracting & rewarding the quiet dog, soon will have an "That's enough!" in place.

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DT&B - Glossary of acronyms & jargon terms.
Encouraging good behaviours, whilst consistently avoiding practise of bad alternatives leads to extinction of the bad. So if dog sits 6/10 times it doesn't sit 4/10 times, encouraging with the right rewards (positively-reinforcing) enough for 9/10 times means it now fails to sit only 1/10 times, sit 10/10 means...