Teaching a puppy to bark at strangers may seems like a nice idea, but you need to carefully consider the potential repercussions. First of all, consider that puppies don’t really have yet what it takes to become good watch dogs. The main reason behind this is that they have little experience and have difficulty to discriminate what is a real threat from what is not. Consider as well that teaching a puppy to bark at strangers can come back to bite you that day that you realize you own a reactive dog who barks his head off all day long.
Puppies are Inexperienced
Puppies are often too inexperienced to provide service as a good watchdog. They haven’t lived long enough to learn all about what happens in their surroundings. It takes time and experience to start understanding what is really a threat from what is really not. Add on top of that the fact that puppies also go through periods of flakiness during their fear stages which escalates their predisposition to barking.
You may end up with puppies who bark at every little sound. A puppy as such is pretty much worthless as the owners learn to quickly ignore the perpetuos barking. Then, on the other hand, you have puppies who care less and may even invite burglars over for a movie and some popcorn.
Consider that it takes certain important qualities to become a good watch dog. Becoming a good watch dog requires maturity and discrimination.
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Discrimination means telling what is a real threat from what is not. This takes experience and very close observation.
A good watch dog must be capable of recognizing promptly when anything is amiss. He needs to understand that it’s perfectly normal for a neighbor to be around as he lives just next door, but it’s not normal for a complete stranger to be walking up the driveway.
Getting Out of Hand 
Teaching a puppy to bark at strangers can get out of hand if you reward your puppy for barking repeatedly at strangers. Exploiting the barking behavior, which is already instinctual in most dogs, may lead to troublesome barking and even reactivity in the long run.
Most puppies will eventually bark at strangers naturally if they live in an area where there are not many people around. When puppies bark at strangers, they quickly learn that their barking works in sending the intruder away, even if the intruder is not really leaving because of the pup’s barking but just because he was walking by to get from point A to point B.
Since the puppy thinks “when I bark, people move away” this behavior will reinforce and put roots and soon becomes a habit. Imagine if owners also enter the picture and entice their puppies to further bark by undersocializing their puppies (not recommended!) and rewarding with approval, under the form of attention or treats. Soon, the barking becomes established and it may be difficult to eradicate, yet alone stop once the barking episodes takes place.
Training a puppy to bark at strangers may cause the barking behavior to generalize to just about anything/anybody the puppy sees unless the training is done by a professional who knows exactly what he is doing. Instead of learning to discriminate who is worthy of barking at from who is not, the puppy risks learning to bark at just about anybody.
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On top of that, if the puppy was never socialized enough in fear of him becoming “too friendly,” fear may take over and the pup may become reactive towards strangers and any other novelties that life throws out at him.
The best watch dogs are often the most socialized dogs, because they become confident and know the normal behaviors of humans and what to watch for when it comes to threats. These dogs take a “wait and see” approach before unnecessarily engaging in alarm barking and alerting their owners.
Teaching a Puppy to Bark at Strangers
Rather, than teaching a puppy to bark at strangers, it may be helpful to just teach a puppy how to bark and then stop barking after giving an alert bark or two. Most puppies will naturally bark when they see or hear unusual noises. It’s important to redirect and acknowledge the puppy so to prevent excessive barking. Here’s how.
In a quiet room, make a smacking sound with your mouth. When your puppy looks at you, hand feed him a treat. Repeat several times. Your goal to create a strong connection between the smacking sound and the delivery of the treat. You will know this connection was made the moment your puppy, upon hearing the smacking sound, comes to your for his treat.
Now practice in an area with some distractions such as in the yard and then on walks. Make sure the behavior becomes very fluent with your puppy responding promptly almost reflexively to your sound. Then, finally progress by making the smacking sound in your property when there are strangers. You may initially have to enlist the help of some volunteers for this.
When a stranger is approaching, wait your puppy to bark once or twice, then next, when your pup comes to you, tell him “thank you” and deliver him a treat.
Now that your puppy has alerted you, let him know that you are in control of the situation. You acknowledged the presence of this person and decided that there is no threat. You can ask your puppy to “go to your mat ” if you are expecting a guest. Consider though that this exercise requires lots of impulse control, making a bit challenging to teach to very young pups since it’s technically a down/stay on a specific spot with added duration, distance and distractions. It’s worthy of training though as your pup matures and learns to be better under control.
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