Bring your left arm up in a circular motion in front of your chest with your elbow bent, then straighten it out to your left side, parallel to the ground, in a “ta-da!” sort of flourish. With your dog lying down in front of you, stand with both arms relaxed at your sides. Sit: Hold a treat in your left hand this time.You will probably be surprised by how quickly he does it. If he doesn’t lie down, do another dozen repetitions with both cues, and then try again with just the hand signal. If he goes down, Click! and Jackpot! That is, feed him lots of treats, one at a time, in special recognition of his ac- complishment. When he has done at least a half dozen downs without the lure, give the hand signal (arm raised) without the verbal cue. Repeat this exercise until he will lie down for the hand signal and verbal cue without the lure. If your dog does not lie down, lower your right hand to his nose and lure him down with the treat. A second after your arm reaches its full height, fingers pointed toward the ceiling, say your verbal “Down” cue. With your dog sitting in front of you, stand with both arms relaxed at your sides. Down: Hold a treat in your right hand.No one wants to risk having their dog miss the signal from across the ring! I encourage my students to start with big hand signals, like the ones most people use in obedience competition. Ultimately I can say stand or I can use the hand signal and the dog will stand and stay.įor a puppy who has learned the hand signal for sit and will sit for that I just keep on saying "sit" as long as it take for them to learn that the hand signal and the verbal "sit" mean the same thing.Here is how I initially teach hand signals for Down, Sit, and Come. So as we go along and the 5 second stand when they start out gets longer and I get to reposition feet and tickle tails up and put the collar under their chin-the hand under the chin moves out to just in front of their nose and I repeat "stand". Practically all the puppies learn the hand signal first in this one. So I'm teaching a default of stand instead of sit. Since I mostly use both verbal and hand signals for the very basic commands which ever one the dog learns first is the one I use to teach the other command.Īll of my puppies start off as show prospects-so the very first command they learn is "stand"-my hand signal will be my hand palm down moved away from the dog-but before we get to that point I use that hand under the dogs chin and the verbal command "stand". Doberman puppies are pretty damned smart.Ĭlick to expand.As Cressrb said-it's all repetition when it comes to commands. I'd only had the puppy for about 10 days when I realized that when the cat came in and went through his "gimme a treat routine" I had the cat and the puppy sitting. If I was in the kitchen the cat would come in and see if he could cadge a treat by weaving around my feet and being a general nuisance and when I finally looked at him, he'd sit. Later I teach the hand signal by linking it to the verbal command-but you can reverse that process if you have a puppy who is responding only to the hand signal.Īnd if you want a good laugh-many years ago I had a cat who really liked dog treats and at the time I didn't have an adult dog-only a puppy. My puppies usually are more responsive to verbal commands rather than hand signals-partly because most of the very basic commands are learned (at least in part) by copying what the adult dogs do to get treats-so sit, stand and down are often learned by puppies in my house as verbal commands with no accompanying hand signal. Most puppies tend to respond to a sit command if you are using a hand signal because they are expecting a treat-I actually fade treating every time I give a command or a hand signal and treat only occasionally-that gives me a chance to see if the pup "knows" the word or signal and isn't just offering behavior because he's expecting or hoping for a treat. I think your puppy is still very young-I use both hand signals and verbal commands for at least a couple of months before testing to see if the puppy actually knows the verbal command.
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