[Mick Trainer]

There are many things that can be done to cure such a problem from punishing the growling with a collar (marking the behavior, walking back and giving a small correction to the dog) or best with an e-collar (small stim when the talking starts and removal of it when it stops) or what I would go with first is to condition the dog to a clicker (if you havn't done so already, or an other secondary re-enforcer) and then put the dog in a drop stay and wait for the dog to stop talking and then "click", return and release the dog thus rewarding the stop talking. The dog should soon learn to go quiet sooner and sooner. Then once the dog has made the association to stopping then make it hold for longer before returning and releasing. The dog should soon learn to go quiet straight away and then hold quiet for the full exercise waiting to be released before giving any verbalisation. If the last option causes trouble then go to the first two.

This really shouldn't be difficult to cure. I would think you should be able to nut this out in a few weeks pretty comfortably.

Mick.