I understand what you are saying, Barbara, and I feel a little bad about seemingly jumping down this gal's throat. I really didn't mean it that way.

I've had to many times change my command words because others aren't looking for the exact picture I look for. As an example, my dog will Assis! immediately and happily but Sit not so much.

I guess, in a productive sense, I would be trying to say, if your dog learns over time that listening to what you're saying is a very good thing for him, that training will be a hell of a lot easier. But I've only trained one so take what you will from that.

As far as the come, for me the restrained come trick from leerburg worked wonders.

Hi Mary,
I got off on the wrong start, so I thought I should try to help
you out a little bit better.
I don't feel I was very fair in my answers to you, and I can't give a good reason as to why. Maybe I was taking out on you the sins of the people that I've seen. It wasn't fair and I'm sorry about it.

I thought I might actually try to be useful and apologize and also offer a thought on what I would do if I were in the situation of the dog thinking that off-leash meant 'fun to run all over the place.' I remember how my puppy was (oh god) off leash. The one time he 'escaped', I pretended we escaped together and ran around our house making happy sounds and staying ahead of him until I caught him easily, then upped the happy antics even higher by promising and giving him treats in the house. I was very superstitious about not teaching him that chase was any fun in the context of running AWAY from me. Maybe you could design an exercise or two that made running with you more fun than being chased. I recently caught a strange, wily loose dog with these same tactics to return to its owner. Ever since then, we have not had to worry one bit that our dog thinks it's fun to run away from us, for any reason. He gets out and runs at us to play tug or ball, instead.

From the comments it seems like you have very serious training coming up, but I think no matter what you will be doing, fixing the 'run-away' game first will be a big help.