Archive for July 7th, 2010
Communicating With Your Dog – Part 3
Training with hand signals starts with combining your verbal command with the hand signal. Your dog will soon learn to associate your hand signal with the desired action and will respond to either verbal or hand signal. There are no official hand signals for dog training and there is no such thing as a “wrong” hand sign. You can use whatever you feel most comfortable with, as long as you are consistent. You can point to his dog crate and give the command “crate”
Soon you will only have to point to the crate and he will respond.
There are a few basic obedience signs, but not enough to truly communicate with your dog. The advantage to using these is that most people who have trained a dog will be able to give your dog basic commands. There are some commonly used signals.
Sit – Start with arm at your side and move your open hand toward your chest, palm up.
Down – Motion toward the floor with your hand open flat, palm down.
Come – With elbow bent and arm outstretched, move arm to chest.
Use only one signal for a particular command. Each signal should have only one meaning.