Teaching your dog to respond to hand signals is another way of training your dog without making a fool of yourself and yelling commands where ever you go!
Step 1
Practically any dog can learn hand signals.
Step 2
To Teach sit, get a small tasty treat such a cheese or chicken and bring your hand behind your dogs head, out of your dogs jumping up range, as soon as your dogs behind touches the ground say 'Sit' while simultaneously performing your chosen hand signal for sit. You can chose any signal you would like. A few ideas would be curling your hand into a fist, or starting with your arm extended in front of you, raise it up towards your body bending it at the elbow, or you can simply give a "stop" sign with your hand by putting it in front of you.
Step 3
After practicing the hand and voice command simultaneously, try doing the hand signal without the voice command. Do not reward your dog until he sits and give him verbal praise or a pat on the head. If he's not responding to the hand signal, try using voice command again along with the hand signal a few more times.
Step 4
You can repeat this training with other hand signals for other desired behavior such as laying down, rolling over, etc...
Tips
- Dogs that are trained for work in the movies, all respond to hand signals so when you see dogs in the movies do great things,understand that they are obeying to hand signals.
- Practice with your dog often and once he's got it down, offer verbal or physical praise as opposed to treats. Some dogs become too reliant on the treats and will not perform if a treat is not being offered.
Warnings
- Make sure your dog has plenty of breaks during training sessions
- Do not exceed about 10-15 minutes of training time, your dog may get bored and the learning could become a struggle of wills rather than productive.
Things You'll Need
- A dog!
- Patience - some dogs learn faster than others.
