Dog Training Hand Commands Guide

As well as you teaching your dog to obey you through the use of verbal commands, you can also teach them to obey you when you only use hand signals instead.  When it does come to you teaching your dog about such commands you will need to use them in conjunction with verbal commands in the beginning.  In this article, we look at one of the ways in which dog training hand commands can be accomplished.

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.  

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.  

Once you feel your dog is actually fully responding to the hand signals that you are using to control them you can now start to actually begin to eliminate the need to provide them with treats.  However, as with the elimination of verbal commands, a dog owner should not stop providing such rewards immediately, but gradually and slowly start to eliminate them.  Instead rather than offering your dog a treat you could praise them.

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.

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.