DOG OBEDIENCE HAND SIGNALS CHART MOVIE

Why wait around for the second cue? He knows what he has to do to make you click the clicker and earn the treat. As soon as your dog realizes the new cue is always followed by the old cue, he’ll jump the gun – which is exactly what you want. Remember that figuring us out is how they make our world work for them. It’s as if you’re saying, “Dog, this cue (hand raised high in the air) means the same thing as this other cue (the word “down”).” Your dog will quickly figure out that the new cue is always followed by the one he knows, and he’ll anticipate the second cue, offering the behavior sooner in order to get his click and treat faster.ĭogs are really good at anticipating. Anytime you’re teaching a new cue for an already-trained behavior, use the new cue first, followed by the old one. Dogs can learn several cues for one behavior they just can’t learn several behaviors for the same cue. Celebrate! Use Big Gestures as Dog Training Cues Repeat until he lies down consistently (at least 8 out of 10 times) when you raise your hand, without having to use your verbal cure or lure.ħ. You might sometimes wait a few seconds longer before you say “down” or use a lure, to see if his brain just needs a bit more time to process the information.Ħ. Repeat until your dog lies down when you raise your hand. “Down!” with your arms at your sides is different from “down” with one hand raised in the air.ĥ. Even though he “knows” the verbal cue, chances are your hand raised in the air (different body language!) will throw him off his game at first and he won’t respond to it. If he doesn’t lie down, use the treat in your hand to lure him down, then click and treat. If he lies down, click (or use another reward marker, such as the word “Yes!”) and give him a treat. Pause for two seconds, then say “Down!”Ĥ. Hold a small treat between your thumb and the palm of your hand.ģ. With your dog sitting in front of you, fully extend your right hand straight up in the air and hold it there. Start with a behavior you’re already taught your dog perform on verbal cue, such as “down.”Ģ. So, how do you deliberately teach a hand signal? Here’s how I do it:ġ.

It’s gratifying to show off to your friends how well your dog responds to the silent signals.

DOG OBEDIENCE HAND SIGNALS CHART MOVIE

They are useful if you have dreams of doing TV or movie work with your dog.They are the only way to train a hearing-impaired dog.They come in handy when your senior dog begins losing her hearing.You can use them when you don’t want to speak – to avoid waking a sleeping baby, when you’re having a conversation on the phone, when you have laryngitis.There are several advantages to teaching hand signals, even if you have no intention of competing in the obedience ring: Advantages of Training Dogs with Hand Signals This is the gesture I use for cuing “Down!” It’s a large signal that can be seen by a dog who is far away. This is bad news for putting behaviors completely on verbal cue, but good news for putting behaviors on a hand signal cue. In fact, many dog folks think their dogs have learned verbal cues, only to find out that their dogs are actually keying off non-verbal communications the owner doesn’t even realize she’s making, such as a tiny bend forward at the waist with the “down” cue, or a slight movement of the hand toward the chest that accompanies the word “sit.” Owners do these things so consistently that they become an important part of the picture for the dog, and the human doesn’t realize that the verbal cue is actually secondary. You’ll realize how truly brilliant your dog is when you see how quickly she comes to understand the meaning – and offer the requested behavior – for your body language cues for sit, down, come, and anything else you want to put on a nonverbal cue. Our dogs already assume our movements have meaning we just have to make sure they’re attaching the meaning we want them to have for our particular signals. This makes teaching hand signals incredibly easy. McConnell writes in The Other End of the Leash, “All dogs are brilliant at perceiving the slightest movement that we make, and they assume that each tiny movement has meaning.” They depend on reading us to make their world work for them. Dogs need to make sense of our movements in order to survive.

The general dog-owning population today is much more aware of the fact that dogs are, first and foremost, body language communicators, thanks to the work of people like Patricia McConnell, Ph.D., and Turid Rugaas. And hand signals can be used in many situations where a verbal cue just won’t work. What I didn’t realize then but I know now, is that hand signals are actually quite simple to teach to dogs – much easier than getting behavior on verbal cue.

Dog obedience hand signals chart