Hand gestures

I'm reading a book called "The Loved Dog" which is kind of an exact opposite of Cesar Milan dog training book.

In the book, the point is brought up that it's easier to teach your dog visual cues than English. So I tried out this theory.

Instead of saying "speak!" when training Brinkley, I made a hand puppet like motion with my hand, as if my hand was speaking.

I'm telling you, it took no longer than 5 minutes of patience and repetition and he was barking on command. Amazing. The toy in my hand was the vehicle for it, but he got it SO fast.

Do you use hand signals instead of voice commands for anything? What are your most successful?

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My dog has passed but when I was training him for obedience competitions I trained him both in verbal commands and in hand gestures. The hand gestures were really helpful as he got older and could no longer hear me.

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I find that Hand gestures work great. I use both verbal & hand. When he feels like ignoring the verbal, he will usually still respond to hand, atleast for sit & stay. I also snap to get his attention sometimes before doing the hand gestures.

ETA: I was thinking of reading this book. Do you Recommend it?

Message edited 10/12/2008 9:11:30 PM.

Re: Hand gestures

We're taking puppy classes at petsmart, and they use both hand signals and words for all training commands.

Like sit- say sit, and then hold a treat or piece of food between your thumb and first finger with the other 3 fingers up in the air.

If you hold it above their head, they have to sit down to look up at the food. And eventually they learn the hand signal and then the word without treats

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Yes I always point and then bring my pointer finger to my knee and Casey will come to me. Works better than "Casey come!"

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DH and I train/raise dogs for guiding eyes for the blind and the dogs are trained with both verbal and hand commands.

Both "our" dogs are trained with verbal and hand commands. I find that they learn the hand commands MUCH faster than the verbal ones adn respond to them quicker.

People get a kick out of watching them go from standing to sitting to laying down to their side to standing back up with all with silent non verbal cues!

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We use both with Scout.

And if he feels like it, he obeys them!

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When we trained our dog with both, now that he is older and is losing his hearing but can still follow the hand commands.

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SofiaBella, I'm only halfway through but it's pretty good. My dog walker left it for me because I told her that most of what Cesar teaches has to do with aggressiveness - exactly the opposite of what we are dealing with.

The Loved Dog is about training through positivity and how to apply that idea to different situations. It's also biographical which is nice but a tiny bit self-serving at the same time. It's not a "take these exact steps to train your dog" kind of book. But I have learned some good lessons about dealing with our dog.

Re: Hand gestures

Posted by greenfreak

SofiaBella, I'm only halfway through but it's pretty good. My dog walker left it for me because I told her that most of what Cesar teaches has to do with aggressiveness - exactly the opposite of what we are dealing with.

The Loved Dog is about training through positivity and how to apply that idea to different situations. It's also biographical which is nice but a tiny bit self-serving at the same time. It's not a "take these exact steps to train your dog" kind of book. But I have learned some good lessons about dealing with our dog.

THANKS FOR THE INPUT

Re: Hand gestures

We have always favored Cesar's ways over that method. HOWEVER, I have used a few of her training tips which do work well. At the end of the day, Charlotte was trained moreso on the Cesar mentality.

We trained Charlotte ourselves using Cesar as an inspiration. We trained her on both verbal AND non-verbal commands... just something we wanted to do. We like to challenge her b/c she is smart and can usually handle it. So, she is trained on a series of hand gestures for sit, lay down, etc. and also verbal, of course.

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I also use hand gestures with verbal commands and find that it is way more effective.

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I DO!!! I put my fingers together (like a closed puppet mouth) and I pull my hand up. Doing this taught Rufio to sit and he's only been home for 1 week!!! :)

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I use hand signals for sit (I put my hands together at my waist, and they instantly run in front of me and sit)

(BTW, I have two pugs);

I then raise my right hand and it means go down on all fours; it works every time.

I should keep up with it and do different ones now that I think about it. I just ended up doing those two, and yes, it took only about 5 min. for them to learn the signals, and seven years later, they still know them.