1 min 10 sec

Quiet:

What

Quiet is simply the act of silencing your dog from barking on command.

Why

It is extremely useful to be able to quiet your dog in a number of situations. Example would be: After the dog has alerted to someone at the door, letting it know that that is enough and it has done its job. If the dog has alerted to something it is not allowed to alert on. (Children, dogs, etc..) If the dog is demanding attention, and it is escalating into an undesired behavior.

How

Teaching the quiet behavior is relatively easy compared to teaching the dog to bark. Starting from when the dog is barking, simply say the word you again would like the dog to associate with the quiet behavior. Make sure you say the word loud enough so that the dog can hear you over the barking. Hopefully, the dog will stop barking out of curiosity as to what you've just said. At this precise moment, you mark and reward accordingly. Again, command the bark and allow the dog to bark for a few moments, marking with a bridge/duration word/sound if needed. Again, say your "quiet" command and when the dog stops to again inquire, you mark and reward accordingly. Repeat.

It is generally considered that dogs enjoy barking once taught, and because we need to the dog to be barking in order to teach him "quiet", we can sacrifice our barking behavior to teach our "quiet" behavior to some extent. This is one of the very few instances where we can employ this theory. If you feel at any point you are losing your barking behavior, simply go back and balance the two with rewards to get the desired response in both behaviors.

If you are having trouble getting duration from your dog in order to teach the quiet command you can try coupling it with the bark at the door.  Most dogs are going to offer more barking in this situation because they are in a higher state of drive.  Simply saying quiet will distract them for a split second.  This is where timing is crucial.  You must reward before the dog goes back to barking.

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