Barking is a natural thing. It seems your dog is barking for no reason. When your dog is barking, try to pick up a ball and play. If he follows, your dog may just be barking for attention or because he's bored.

I don't like to spray water in a dogs' face. I remmeber when we got Primo (my dog of 1 day...LONG story) the breeder (although she wasn't good at all) told us if he misbehaved to slam a rolled up newspaper hard hard on the floor next to him. After we did that, the dog was terrified. We did it once with Mickey btu saw it was just scarying the dog, not disciplining him.