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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.

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.

As mentioned before it is crucial that when you are first teaching your dog to obey hand rather than verbal commands you use the verbal ones as well. It is important that before you start the training you decide exactly what hand signal will represent what verbal command. Only once, you have decided which signal represents which verbal command can you then start your dog’s 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.

With this kind of training you will need to repeat the verbal commands every time you do the hand signals in the beginning, then as time progresses you need to start eliminating the verbal ones. Although you should be still praising your dog and offering them rewards these should only be offered when they actually respond to the hand commands and not the verbal ones as well. It is a good idea to very slowly and gradually stop using the verbal commands and replace them with hand ones only.

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.

When it comes to getting advice on the right ways for you to do dog training hand commands there is plenty of places where you can get help. The internet is a great source for finding advice and information on the correct dog training hand command techniques to be used.