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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.

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 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.  

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.  

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.

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.