Best method to teach 'quiet' - stop barking

[tritonx]

Fraser luckily isn't a mad barker, but he does bark outside in the garden when some people and some dogs walk by outside the fence (not all, for unknown reasons.) I'd like to get him to stop barking quickly to avoid annoying the neighbours. My attempts so far have resulted in me saying 'quiet' and he comes inside for a treat, so more of a distraction method, but I want him to stop barking on command. So, researched a bit and have taught him to 'speak' at which command he gives a single bark. The next step seems to be to get him to bark several times and not reward, but to say 'quiet' and give him a treat when I say 'quiet' and he's silent. I'm interested in other people's methods that have been successful. Did it follow this routine? Did it work well?

[Deb]

Hi, I used an unconventional method with Bailey, but it did seem to work. Basically I put my finger to my lips and say "Sshh" as you would to a child. To start the training, as soon as he did stop barking I rewarded him while shushing and finger on lips. He does respond well to finger commands, such as a click when we are eating to get him to sit, a raised finger to say "wait" for a treat, and touch the treat to say "go on then", so whether he picked up the finger on lips because of the other finger commands I don't know. Hopefully someone who knows how to train a dog properly will be able to help. Good luck.

[tritonx]

Well, I'm not sure if I'm doing the stop bark method properly.  Thanks for your response Deb. I guess what I've been doing up till now is a variant of what you've done. However, Fraser translates 'quiet' to come for a treat which has been acceptable as it does stop him barking. There's really only two situations where a need for a 'quiet' comes up--when he's barking at the front window at passersby and when I'm inside and he's outside in the garden barking at passersby. Since Fraser quickly picked up the 'bark' command, each morning I've been getting him to bark, praising and then waiting for a pause to click and treat so he can focus on that part. He gets very turned on (and not in that way  ) when he sees me with clicker and treats as he loves training (or mainly treats), so he's already in a state of high excitement. So he whines for a long time after the bark, trying to prompt me to give him a treat as he knows he's in training, but doesn't know what to offer (and will hopefully throw a lie down and roll over into the mix). It's hard for him to understand that basically doing nothing is what I want from him. Maybe since it's more or less a matter of teaching a non behaviour, it will just take a long time. I don't like stressing him out though, trying to please me when he doesn't understand what I want. Am I doing something wrong?