Train Your Great Pyrenees to Stop Barking: When You Don’t Want Fido to ‘Speak’

July 28, 2019 Bri Wyzard

So you have a Great Pyrenees, and now you’re thinking, “Oh my goodness, will he ever stop barking?” The answer is yes, eventually, if you’re willing to put the time and work into training him.

How do you train a Great Pyrenees to stop barking? The way to teach a Great Pyrenees to stop barking is to understand in each circumstance why he is barking, and to address that circumstance with attention and positive training sessions. The dog needs to be taught what to do instead of barking. By consistently using positive training methods, a Great Pyrenees will learn over time when he doesn’t need to bark.

In this article, I’ll teach you how to figure out why your Great Pyr is barking, and then how to train him to stop barking. Teaching your dog not to bark can be a challenging undertaking, but the end result is always worth it.

Note: this article is about Great Pyrenees barking as it pertains to pets. If you’re interested in Great Pyrenees barking as it pertains to livestock guardian dogs, check out this article.

**Why Is Your Great Pyrenees ALWAYS Barking?**

The first thing you need to understand is that, even though it seems like your Great Pyrenees is barking at nothing much of the time, he is actually barking at something. World renowned dog trainer, Turid Rugaas, wrote in her book, Barking: The Sound of a Language, that people assume dogs are barking to show aggression, to irritate us, or to dominate us or others. People view it as bad behavior, but that really isn’t fair.

In reality, Rugaas teaches, dogs are barking to communicate, and we need to figure out what they are trying to tell us before we can get them to stop. She says that dogs generally bark for 6 different reasons and I’ve added a 7th:

Excitement
Warning
Fear
Defense (Rugaas calls it “guarding”)
Frustration
Attention (Rugaas calls it “learned barking”)
Intimidation (I’ve added this reason as it is likely the main reason your Great Pyrenees is barking, and it does not fit into the other six types).

In order to prevent your dog from engaging in unwanted barking, you need to understand what type of barking your dog is doing, and address that problem specifically.

How to ‘Hear’ What Your Great Pyr is Telling You

You must figure out what your dog is telling you in order to stop his barking. If you ignore him, scold him, yell at him, or punish him (all unkind and ineffective ways to interact with a dog anyway), you haven’t addressed the problem. This means you’ll never solve the problem, and your dog will keep barking, unless you make him stop through fear or pain. Let’s not go there!

Instead, here’s how you can learn to identify the reason your dog is barking:

Excitement Barking

This one is obvious. When your dog gets excited about something – you coming home from work, going for a walk, a guest at the door – he becomes joyful. His tail wags, his body shakes, he can’t seem to stop moving around, and he barks happily (and usually loudly).

Warning Barking

Rugaas describes the warning bark as a short, sharp bark that is used to warn the pack of potential danger. She says if you ignore your dog’s warning bark or tell him to be quiet, he may start barking a lot more and louder in an attempt to communicate to you that he senses a threat you don’t seem to be understanding.

As an example of how this bark is supposed to work, Rugaas watched as a stranger approached the yard of a mother Leonberger – the mother barked once and all the puppies stopped what they were doing and immediately ran into the house in response to her single warning bark.

Fear Barking

These are high pitched sounds, often similar to excitement barking sounds, but you can tell from your dog’s body language that he is afraid (restless, pacing, anxious). I won’t address this type of barking in this post because helping a fearful dog is a huge topic. Stay tuned for a post coming soon on treating fear problems in Great Pyrenees.

Guard Barking

This type of barking is often misunderstood as aggression. The dog barks, growls, and snarls to either guard something (like food) or because he feels like he needs to defend himself from a person or other animal. I also won’t address this type of barking in this post – I’ll have a post up soon on treating “aggression” problems in Great Pyrenees. Spoiler alert: most behavior labeled “aggressive” is usually actually “defensive.”

Frustration Barking

This is short repetitive barking of highly stressed dogs, usually due to neglect of some sort. You often hear it from dogs who are tied up outside for long periods of time, and are simply lonely and stressed. This bark is easy to prevent: stop neglecting your dog (I know you wouldn’t do that, of course, since you care enough to even learn about training your dog).

Great Pyrenees are very social creatures, and I don’t recommend making them “outside dogs” if you are keeping them as a pet. Only livestock guardian Pyrs should be “outside dogs” as they have a family of livestock and other dogs outside with them. Your Great Pyrenees will be lonely, sad, and distressed if kept outside alone.

Attention-Seeking Barking

This occurs when the dog has associated barking with getting attention (either verbal, tactile, or even a treat). The dog will bark a few times, then look around for the reward. If he doesn’t get it, he’ll bark some more.

Intimidation Barking

I feel like I have to add this seventh type of barking as I think the main reason Great Pyrs bark (intimidation) doesn’t fit into the accepted categories. Livestock guardian dog (LGD) breeds, like the Great Pyrenees, were bred to have a job to do: keep the livestock safe. One of the main ways they did this was by barking to scare away predators. It’s a form of posturing.

LGDs generally only fight as a last option. Their domineering size and their formidable barks are often enough to scare away threats. Unfortunately, for the city dweller, this means your dogs may bark a lot at anything (sight, sound, smell, feeling) that they’re uncertain about.

Here’s an example - this Great Pyrenees is barking because he spotted a racoon:

How to Train Your Great Pyrenees to Stop Barking

Once you figure out why your dog is barking, you can work on changing your dog’s behavior whenever that situation arises. The following training techniques will work for excitement barking, warning barking, intimidation barking, and attention-seeking barking.

Step 1 – Figure Out Your Dog’s Favorite Reward

The only way to stop “excessive” barking is through positive training. This means that, before you can train successfully, you need to figure out what your dog absolutely loves as a reward. For some dogs, it will be a particular type of dog treat (see my article on healthy and safe Great Pyr treats). For a lot of dogs, you can use cooked chicken (even just boiled) as an irresistible treat.

Other dogs (many Great Pyrenees included) may not be very food motivated, so think about what makes them most happy. A certain toy? A game of fetch or tug-of-war? Praise from you? Belly rubs? Kisses? I knew a Great Pyrenees once who would do anything in the world for a tummy rub. If that’s your Pyr, then tummy rubs are your training reward.

Whatever your dog loves most is what you’ll want to use as his training reward.

Quick note here – if your dog is motivated by treats, make sure you are only giving him really tiny bites of the treats so you don’t overfeed him.

Step 2 – Teach Your Dog Some Obedience Commands

You’ll need to work on teaching your dogs some basic commands using positive methods. Any commands are fine – my favorite easy ones are “look at me,” “sit,” and “down.”

Your ultimate goal here is that you want to teach your dog to look to you and to be calm whenever he feels like barking at something. In order to accomplish this, you need to teach your dog how to do training sessions (this is looking to you) and how to keep calm (this is usually sitting and being quiet).

For help on training your dog with positive methods, check out my free step-by-step dog training manual. In the manual, I teach you how to teach basic commands and give you the skills you need to pursue further training.

Step 3 - Identify Why Your Dog Is Barking and Acknowledge It

When your dog starts barking, you’ll need to actually go over to your dog and see what he is barking at. If it’s something in the yard, for example, take him outside and look at it. If it’s outside of the yard, go up to the fence or boundary and look. This shows him that you understand he is concerned about something, and that you take his concerns seriously.

Step 4 - Give Your Dog Something to Do Other Than Bark

When you see what your dog is barking at (even if it seems like nothing), then get your dog’s attention away from it with a positive training session. Sometimes you can get his attention with a simple “look at me” command, or by showing him the reward (e.g., a treat). Other times you may have to make some interesting noises to get your dog’s attention.

If your dog is really distracted, and you can’t get his attention any other way, put a leash on him and very gently pull him away. Try to get his attention again. You may need to move him even further away from the area where he’s barking. As soon as you get his attention, do a training session. When he is calm (usually when you get him to “sit” and stay there for a few seconds), reward him. This short session may be enough to stop him barking at that time, although this is unlikely unless he believes the “threat” is gone.

So if he is still interested in whatever he was barking at (very likely), get a little closer to that thing or area, and try to get him to do another training session before he starts barking. If you can tell he’s even thinking about barking, get his attention, do a short training session until he’s calm, and then reward him.

If he starts barking before you’re able to do this, then follow the same instructions as above again – get his attention, do a training session to get him calm, and reward when calm. Pull him further away from the source of the barking again if you can’t get his attention where you’re at.

At first, your dog might only be able to be calm for 1 or 2 seconds – reward that! But only reward him before he barks again (you do not want to reward barking). As you continue these training sessions, he should be able to stay calm for longer and longer. Reward each increase in time that he is calm.

You’ll need to keep moving him closer to what he’s barking at and doing training sessions until you can get him to stop barking.

This will take a lot tries, but this does work! It will get easier and easier as time goes on, and your dog learns the routine.

Remember, you’re teaching him that when he feels like barking, he should instead be calm and look to you. You’re teaching him what he should be doing, rather than teaching him not to bark – the end result is the same, but the experience for your dog is a positive one.

Step 5 – Add in Some Lingo

Eventually, you want your dog to be calm and look to you, rather than bark, whenever something alerts him. In the meantime, adding a little lingo can be of some help. By this, I mean to use a phrase consistently, such as “thank you,” “that’s enough,” “it’s okay,” or “leave it” (I prefer the last one).

When your training sessions become easier, meaning you are easily able to distract your dog from barking with a training session, you can use your lingo once your dog stops barking.

For example, I used this technique recently when training my herding puppy, Sage. She loves to drive cows, which usually isn’t a problem. However, when we are inside the house and we have open range cattle in our yard, she won’t stop barking. Sometimes I let her out and let her move the cattle where she wants them, but I don’t want her moving cattle when there are aggressive bulls around who could hurt her.

So when she started barking at the cattle through the window, and I didn’t want her to bark, I would get her attention (this initially took quite a bit of effort), and then I would get her to sit and be quiet. After awhile, she would stop barking at the cattle as soon as I got her attention and then I would say, “leave it.”

After doing this for quite some time, as soon as she started barking, I would say “leave it,” and she would stop. She associated the lingo with the action.

You can also teach your dog the commands “speak” and “quiet.” Instead of saying, “leave it” or “it’s okay,” etc., you would say “quiet” and make things really obvious for your dog. Below is a video of one of my favorite dog trainers, Zak George, teaching a dog the commands “speak” and “quiet.”

Telling your dog “quiet” on its own isn’t going to work when your dog is barking because he’s alarmed – you do still need to follow the rest of the training techniques explained here.

Step 6 – Practice Training with the Trigger

For many “excessive” barking problems, you can practice training against them by gradually adding in the thing that triggers them.

Let me give you an example. Maybe your dog barks every time someone knocks at the door or walks by the house. You can practice with that trigger.

You’ll need to get someone to help. Have this person stand outside the house and knock on the door once gently. Your dog will bark like crazy. You’ll use the technique described above (distraction, training session, reward when calm and quiet). As detailed above, you may need to pull your dog gently away from the door to be able to get his attention, and you’ll want to keep working on sessions, getting closer and closer to the door, as your dog gets better at training.

When your dog is calm, you’ll ask the person to knock gently on the door again and go through the whole thing over and over. Eventually your dog will hesitate before barking and you want to try to get his attention and get him the reward during that hesitation (prevent the barking).

You will gradually work up the trigger. The person will knock more times, will knock more loudly, and eventually, the person will knock unexpectedly, and so on. This is a long process.

In the video below, once again, dog trainer, Zak George, illustrates how this is done.

Notice that this dog was so hard to distract that he eventually had to take a step back and think of another approach. He then had the woman knock on the door with the door open, so the dog could already see it was her. This allowed him to get the dog’s attention for a training session. If you’re having a really hard time training your dog, you’ll have to get creative like this. Figure out ways to make things easy enough for your dog that he can succeed wherever he’s at in his training.

It gets easier the more you do it. One more thing - Great Pyrenees take a long time to mature - 2 and sometimes even 3 years. Your dog will likely calm down a bit and bark less as he gets older.

Love, patience, time, consistency, and effort – if you have these things, you will be able to train your Great Pyrenees, even though it may not always feel like it. Hang in there!

Disclaimer: I am not a professional dog trainer by any means, just an amateur with experience training my pets with positive training methods. I used the online program Brain Training for Dogs (affiliate link) to learn how to teach my dogs using positive methods. The program has a lot of articles on barking.

For Love of Livestock