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 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.

It is important that you continue to use the verbal and hand commands for some time, but very slowly you start to voice the commands far less and use hand signals more. At this stage, you should now start to only reward your dog when they actually respond just to the hand commands rather than when you say the word as well. It is important that you do not eliminate the verbal commands straight away, but rather gradually eliminate them. In the beginning, it is a good idea to do half the training when you do the verbal and hand commands together, and the other half just using the hand commands on their own.

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 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.