7 month puppy barking and getting hackles up at nearly anything

Hi guys, my 7 month old bitch staff has recently started barking at any noise or visitor that comes around and has be getting her 'hackles' up too. It seems to be a fearful bark and she comes right once she sees who it is and gets a pat but it makes her seem quite scary to people coming around and quite noisy for the neighbours i imagine. She can be quite jumpy too if there is a noise outside she often runs back inside with her ears pinned back barking, it has started in the last month is this normal for a pup of her age?! She has an awesome temprament and has always been great with people kids and other dogs but today a kid was patting her (stranger) who she licked and was happy as larry until the father stood up behind the kid and then she started barking at them and wouldnt stop, she seemed scared. Help! (Please excuse the long post)

Hey! She's in her second fear period;
https://www.doglistener.co.uk/puppies/criticalperiods.shtml

How you react now will shape her future behaviour. Try to build her confidence in scary situations, don't flood her though (I.e bring scary thing close to try and get her used to it). Allow her to approach in her own time if she wants to and praise confident behaviour, don't pay attention to fearful behaviour. If she likes food, try catching her attention as soon as she sees the scary thing, and then get her attention and feed lots of small high value treats - she will begin to associate the fearful stimulus with something positive. If you're stuck, perhaps contact a trainer for a session to set you in the right direction.

Thanks for your reply. How will she know she is not being rewarded for barking (say if i treat her everytime we get a visitor or in situations where she is showing fear)

It's a question of your timing. If every time she barks you give her a treat, she may well start to think that barking's great! However, if you wait for that second that she's not barking and then give her praise and a treat, she will learn that not barking is better.

Something else you can try is teaching a command 'quiet'. Start in a less intense situation, when you might get just one or two barks. When she barks say 'quiet' and, if she looks at you, give her a treat. You may need to put the treat under her nose to start off with to draw her away from whatever's caught her attention. Soon, though, you should be able to be further away and still get her to at least look at you with the command 'quiet'. That should then build up to her knowing to stop barking and come to you for a treat.

This can also help with confidence, as she starts to see that scary things that she initially wants to bark at are in fact part of the 'quiet' game.

On scary things in general, I'd add a couple of things to Rachel's good points about dealing with them. If there is something that your girl's scared of that you might otherwise be inclined to remove so as not to scare her, what you can do is leave it there until she has accepted it's not going to kill her, then take it away. You are then rewarding the acceptance by the positive action of taking the thing away. This is called 'negative reinforcement' (nothing to do with punishment), where you take a negative thing away as a means of reward.

You might also want to think about clicker. My Millie's not the bravest dog in the world and easily goes into victim mode. I've taught her to target scary things using clicker training, and it helps massively. Have a look at her here, in very early days, and you'll see how quickly it can build up confidence.

https://staffy-bull-terrier.niceboard.com/t60863-millie-does-clicker

Can't add nothing to good advice above

Liz has answered in the same way that I would! Thank you My adult girl is reactive to men, I have learnt her timings and feed before she has a chance to react but as soon as she sees the person and then praise every time she looks at them AND when she has the confidence to look away and to me (she will stare them out and is too scared to take her eyes off of them). If she is continuing to bark in my situation she is too close so we take a few steps back and ask for a sit/paw (any alternative command really as long as she can do it with ease but it will still distract her). Bug can now focus on command when she's feeling overloaded or scared, I feel because she knows I will handle the situation and she just has to concentrate on me, it takes the pressure off of her. It's taken us a long time to get here as Bug was an adult with these behaviours already ingrained when I adopted her, but with patience you may be able to prevent these behaviours from becoming a permanent thing.

Mia doesn't trust men in general especially if they have consumed alcohol but have worked through this even if they have a sip she still knows it takes a lot of trust to work through these issues and a lot of patience. You couldnt ask better advice than from rachel and liz

Thanks for all your helpful answers. We have had her since 8 weeks and this scared/barking phase is a very new thing. I wondered if it could have anything to do with my partner being away for work for the last month, whom she used to see every single day even more than me. Might be a protective thing but almost anything will trigger it she even barks at the wind and runs inside with her hair standing up! Very odd. She is well trained in other areas and clicker trained too so i will try both of your ideas and try to remove her from the situations aswell hopefully can stop it before it comes a big problem !