Absolutely: reward based training is the way to go. When we haven't done any training with our dog to teach alternative positive behaviours, then how is a dog to know what to do?
Barking for a dog is an absolutely normal behaviour, as is barking when something as exciting happens as visitors. Wow, visitors!! A dog that knows how to sit quietly and wait to be greeted by people, knows a command to shush, knows to go to its bed and lie down quietly, isn't going to be a barking, jumping dog. If a dog hasn't been trained to do any of these alternatives, and to know from experience that these are all positive options that get rewards, then barking is an obvious behaviour especially for puppies, who are excited by everything!
So here's what you do:
http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/excessive-barking
It sounds like you are already working with this approach
-- but a few questions -- how long have you tried working on 'shush'? And how have you approached it? It does take time, regular practice, consistency... plus you need to start when the behaviour can be isolated eg when it is just you and the dog, then you and another person and the dog, and slowly work up towards training him to contain his urge to bark or to stop when the environment is really distracting and exciting (eg set him up for success, incrementally
) rather than when he is overwhelmed with the visitors, etc -- and it is tricky and takes time. If you haven't done a good rewards based class with either an APDT or ideally CPDT trainer, then that would be a good starting point too. It helps a LOT to get professional advice and to work in a class environment where your dog automatically learns to focus despite all the distraction of other people and dogs. Just training at home often means people get timing wrong in what to reward, and thus have little success and feel discouraged, or the dog only learns in a very quiet environment rather than with real world distractions.
Also: teaching your dog to sit and wait for attention also often helps stop barking. The barking tends to be associated with running around in excitement at the arrival of visitors, for most of us.
It still amazes me after years of owning dogs, how many people will opt to work unconstructively against their dog rather than working with them towards desired behaviour as you are doing with Ian Dunbar's approach
-- which overall, is so much easier and so much more fun for both people and dog. Your pup is just the age at which he needs good constructive, positive training and management on all sorts of fronts, to make sure you get the adult dog you want (as it is much harder to train away from unwanted behaviours that have become ingrained). You are at just the right point to be asking for some help on this particular issue -- so hope the suggestions help and let us know how the training gets along! But remember there are no immediate solutions (just as with teaching kids!).
PS a big mistake lots of owners make is to accidentally reinforce the negative, unwanted behaviour. For example, dog barks barks barks when visitors arrive and we owners immediately start to fuss over the dog to try and get them to be quiet (bet we have all done that! :lol
. But all we are doing then is reinforcing that from the dog's point of view, "Wey hey, people arrive and if I do my happy bark my owners pay LOTS and LOTS of attention to ME, everyone looks at me; they try to pet me and distract me and even if they shout, hey, it ends up being all about ME ME ME! What a total win for ME!!" (kids do just the same! The reward of parents' attention is often worth upsetting them through unwanted behaviour). A first step is to totally ignore barking as if the dog doesn't exist; don't even look at the dog and ask visitors to do likewise. As soon as the dog is quiet for 5 minutes, THEN he gets praise and some attention. Eventually, he WILL make the connection (but at the same time, you want to be training towards desireable behaviour too as per the advice of Ian Dunbar).