Talking
 

Jaeger is very vocal. It took a good 3-6 weeks for him to find his voice when we first got him, as he never, ever barked. Now he's comfortable here and he barks all the darned time.

He has an alarm bark if there's a loud unexpected noise somewhere in the house.
He has a "someone is here" bark.
He has a "I want that/you" bark.
He has a "play with me" bark.
He has a "gotta go potty" bark.
He has a "my water bowl is empty" or "i think its time for food/im hungry" bark.

He knows "quiet" and "no bark" and will react appropriately short term. The problem with that is that while he barks all the time, he always has a reason for barking.

He does have a set of potty bells and uses them some of the time-we taught him this before he started barking to go outside and it just hasn't clicked 100% yet. I don't mind that he barks to go potty as we want him potty trained more than anything, but the problem is he has started barking to tell us everything.

He knows "speak" too, and will only bark once if we tell him to speak.

He is a talker, too, usually only when he's frustrated/back talking, but I decided that I'm going to try to teach him to talk on command in the hopes I can eventually teach him to substitute talking for barking in most situations.

Has anyone tried it?Did you have any luck? How did you go about doing it?

I'm going to praise/treat him when he does talk to me, and tell him "talk to momma."

I did try provoking the talking and rewarding him profusely when he "got it" and he did, some, but mostly he just barked a lot.