Home / Questions / German Shorthaired Pointer
Some, but not a lot. The breed record rates the German Shorthaired Pointer at 3 out of 5 for barking, and the honest translation is a dog that speaks on occasions rather than on principle. This is a Sporting breed from Germany with an Enthusiastic, smart, friendly and tireless outdoors temperament, and its voice is a tool it uses rather than a soundtrack it lives inside. For most households the volume is unremarkable, noticeable on the day the doorbell rings six times and invisible for the quiet weeks between, which is exactly what a middle score is supposed to mean.
They stay youthful for years, and their sense of humor includes stealing socks for the chase. Choose this breed for the dog it is on a wet Tuesday in February, not just on holiday hikes. They bond closely and can fret when left, so alone time must be built up gradually from puppyhood. GSPs are affectionate clowns with an enormous engine, and they need serious daily running. German hunters in the 1800s crossed old German pointers with Spanish pointers and later English pointers to create a versatile dog that could hunt feathers, fur and waterfowl in one day.
The full record behind the headline runs like this. Barking is rated 3 out of 5 for the German Shorthaired Pointer; energy sits at 5 out of 5 and trainability at 4 out of 5, and those two numbers decide how manageable the first one is: an energetic, trainable dog can be taught a settle, while energy with nowhere to go becomes noise. It is a large dog of 45 to 70 lb from the Sporting group, developed in Germany, with an Enthusiastic, smart, friendly and tireless outdoors temperament. Read together, those lines describe how much dog is making the noise, how often it is likely to feel like making it, and how much of the household's week the dog occupies, which is the real context any barking verdict needs.
Context decides the volume with this breed. In a quiet house on a quiet street, a German Shorthaired Pointer can go whole days near the bottom of its range; move the same dog beside a school route or a busy fence line and the 3 out of 5 starts earning its number. A dog passing the house, a noise in the night that does not resolve, a squirrel at close quarters: reported, briefly. What a middle score means in practice is that the list is short and the reports end. The German Shorthaired Pointer's Enthusiastic, smart, friendly and tireless outdoors temperament and its 90 to 120 minute exercise need set the baseline, and a dog that has had its exercise and its company files fewer reports than one that has had neither.
Garden fences need to be high and sound. A Shorthair in full family life is a delight: affectionate, funny, good with children and sociable with other dogs. Shorthairs learn fast and love working with their handler, but they are sensitive, easily bored by drilling and distracted by anything with feathers.
The rest of the record rounds the picture out. The record's color line for the German Shorthaired Pointer reads: Solid liver, liver and white (ticked or patched), and liver roan. The coat is described as Short, thick, water resistant coat, with grooming effort rated 2 of 5 and shedding at 3 of 5. Food for a typical 58 lb adult runs about $37 a month on this site's cost record, and insurance is recorded at $50 to $85 a month, a reminder that the voice comes attached to a whole dog with a decade of budget in it. None of that alters the headline rating, 3 out of 5; it simply keeps the decision about this breed's noise in proportion with the decision about the breed.
Look sideways for a moment at the breeds this record finds most similar: the Drentse Patrijshond, the Chesapeake Bay Retriever and the Gordon Setter. Their bark ratings are not identical to the German Shorthaired Pointer's 3 out of 5, which is worth remembering in both directions: do not borrow a similar breed's quiet reputation, and do not lend this one's volume out. The German Shorthaired Pointer's 3 out of 5 is its own: judge the noise by it, not by a lookalike's reputation, because two similar breeds can be very different neighbors.
Keep perspective, and keep a tally before you keep a trainer. A week of honest notes, what set it off, how long it ran, usually shows a pattern with an address: one fence line, one hour of the day, one unmet need. Windows improve with access management: film on the lower glass, a garden layout that does not post the dog at the fence for the whole day. The German Shorthaired Pointer's trainability, rated 4 out of 5, is more than enough for this program; what it needs from the owner is consistency, because a mid-score breed keeps a precise ledger of which barks worked.
Six to eighteen months is the wild chapter: strength, stamina and prey drive all peak while the brain is still young, and consistent training plus real work carries everyone through. Many Shorthairs stay keen and active deep into old age if arthritis is managed early.
Keep the record's figures in view while you decide. Height 21 to 25 inches, weight 45 to 70 lb, lifespan 10 to 12 years, exercise 90 to 120 minutes a day. Barking 3 of 5, energy 5 of 5, trainability 4 out of 5. A small dog's 3 out of 5 and a giant dog's 3 out of 5 are different acoustic events, which is why the size lines belong on a page about noise: pitch, volume and the neighbor's tolerance all scale with the dog producing them.
Sometimes, and sometimes it gives you stereo. For the German Shorthaired Pointer specifically, a Sporting dog whose exercise needs run 90 to 120 minutes a day, that plays out in daily routines rather than in occasional big fixes. A companion can drain the boredom and loneliness out of a German Shorthaired Pointer's day, and boredom is a common fuel for barking in a breed needing 90 to 120 minutes of exercise and company to match. But dogs also learn each other's songs: pair a vocal dog with another vocal breed and the duet is a real risk. Choose the second dog for its own record, its bark score included, and introduce it as company, not as a noise treatment with a heartbeat. Cats and small animals need care: the breed hunts fur as happily as feathers.
Read two lines of the record together: barking at 3 out of 5 and apartment suitability rated Not ideal. In the German Shorthaired Pointer's case the setting matters as much as the rule: this is a breed with very high energy and a bark level of 3 out of 5, so its voice is heard against a fairly specific home backdrop. A low score with a good apartment rating is the easy yes. A high score means the honest answer depends on your walls, your neighbors and your willingness to run the management program on this page every day. What never works is hoping the dog did not get the memo about its own breed: a German Shorthaired Pointer will be exactly as vocal as its record says, in whatever building it lives in.
Often, yes, and the record's dog rating, Good with dogs, frames why. With the German Shorthaired Pointer, whose typical weight runs 45 to 70 pounds and whose lifespan reaches 10 to 12 years, the honest answer also changes a little across the dog's life, from puppyhood to senior status at about 7 years. Barking at dogs is usually one of three things: a greeting that overshoots, frustration at a lead or fence that prevents a greeting, or a warning to keep distance. The German Shorthaired Pointer's score, 3 out of 5, predicts the volume of whichever it is. A dog that is exercised, 90 to 120 minutes a day for this breed, and taught to settle and look back at its owner owns a volume control that an under exercised dog simply does not have.
Last updated: November 11, 2026