April 5, 2008

Dog Training Hand Commands

by Winston Choo

Along with teaching your dog to respond to verbal commands, one can also teach them to respond by using hand signals. When it comes to learning, the different types of dog training hand commands these in the beginning will need to be taught in conjunction with the verbal ones as well. In this article, we take a look at the way in which such commands can be taught to your dog.

Teaching your dog how to obey hand commands is very simple and generally, dogs find it very easy to understand these along with verbal commands. Along with you and your dogs when you start this kind of training you will also need some kind of treat (food is ideal) that you can reward your dog with when they react in the correct way to the signal.

It is crucial when you first start training your dog to react to hand commands rather than spoken ones is that you use the two in conjunction with each other. Also, you need to first decide what signal will represent what spoken command that you want your dog to obey. Only after you have made a decision on each hand command can you then start actually training your dog to respond to them.

When you first start your dogs hand command training you will need to say the word and show them very deliberately the hand movement at the same time. This you will need to repeat several times to them before they start to understand what it is that you would like them to do. Immediately you notice that they have reacted as you begin to raise your hand and say the word then this is the time that they should be rewarded.

As you continually repeat the commands and signals you should very slowly you should start to eliminate the verbal commands. However, you should still use the rewards of food and praise for your dog when they respond to your hand signals only. For a while as you begin to slowly eliminate the verbal commands you should when carrying out the training, use them half of the time, and the other half of the time just hand signals.

After a period of time when they have begun to purely respond to your hand commands then you can start beginning to eliminate the food rewards also. It is crucial that you do not stop providing such treats as soon as they start responding to hand commands, but gradually eliminate them and instead offer your dog praise instead.

When you are going to be teaching your dog to respond to hand commands rather than verbal ones it is a good idea to start of with the most basic commands that you want your dog to respond to. Most owners will start of with the ones we all learn in the beginning with our dogs, which is sit, stay, down and come. Only once you feel that you and your dog are ready should you be moving on to commands that are far more elaborate.

Getting the right kind of advice when it comes to you, teaching your dog to respond to hand commands is easy to find. There are lots of books, videos and websites that offer sound advice and information on what are the right dog training hand commands techniques that one should be using.

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