Saturday, January 3, 2009

Advice On Dog Training Hand Commands

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.

Certainly, teaching your dog hand signals is very simple and most dogs will find them very easy to understand.  But in order to get started on training them you will need a few treats, which you can provide to your dog as a reward for getting what, you have asked (signalled) of them right. 

It is important that in the beginning when you are teaching your dog to react to hand commands is that you use the words as well.  Therefore, you will need to decide which hand signals relate to which commands you will be giving to your dog.  Only once you have made a decision on which verbal commands go with which hand signals can you then start your dogs training. 

In the beginning as you, say each command to your dog you should also very slowly and deliberately show the hand signal as well.  You will need to repeat the verbal command and the hand signal several times in order for your dog to understand what it is you would like them to do.  Then once they react the first time to you saying the word and doing the hand signal then you can reward them.

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. 

Then when you start to notice that your dog is reacting purely to your hand commands only then this is the stage when you start to stop giving them food as a reward.  However, you should never eliminate the rewards immediately from the training and if you want praise, them slightly for doing as commanded instead of offering them food.

When teaching your dog to react to hand signals it is best to start of with the most basic commands that you would normally teach them.  So it is best to start with sit, down and stay.  Then when you feel able to and when you feel that your dog is capable you can move on to much more elaborate ones if you wish.

Actually getting advice on the right way dog training hand commands should be done is easy.  There are plenty of sites on the internet today that can offer lots of practical advice and tips.  Plus there are plenty of books and videos, which can help you with training your dog to respond to such hand signals.

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