Quote Originally Posted by Jessika
WELL if he is quiet when you say "speak", then have "speak" be the command to make him quiet!!

Dogs don't know english and just know to associate a sound (or a word to us, since we DO speak english) with an action. lol. Just because you say "sit!" doesn't mean the dog will sit there and think "oh, sit means put my behind on the ground, ok!". I mean you could teach your dog that "sit" really means to fetch, "lay down" means to speak, "speak" means to sit, etc. They're just sounds to them
I was thinking of that but with multiple dogs who already know the commands it would be very confusing. I say Speak, Kaige shuts up but Nanook barks.

Besides I say what I mean therefore I wouldn't remember to say speak when I mean for them to be quiet etc.... I'd be confused too.

Besides god forbid but if anything happens to me & he needs to go to another home if I were to train him like that and no one else knew, he'd probably have a hard time finding another home because everyone would think that he is not trained because he isn't listening to the commands. (not saying that I would do that for every command)