Communicating on woofy level

One of the key things about dog training is of course getting through to them on their level. Mainly the ways you do this involve the reward / negative enforcement. A slightly additional track is to think about the fact that dogs don’t speak like we do. With Dillon’s training along with linking commands with rewards the commands have also had a non-verbal sign attached. Sit for instance is a clenched fish brought to our chest and slightly moved up. Stay is a flat palm out to him.

Deciding on using these body language indicators has been something really worth while. Whilst we aren’t at the hand signal = action from afar stage, during dog training it proved very useful. Whilst all the other dog owners were repeating the word stay like some mantra, all I did was one and then held the hand signal whilst moving away. Dillon isn’t perfect and a leaf burped a bit away after he was there in stay for a while, so he moved. It was a back to the stay and continue with no leaf burping so success.

Eventually the idea is that more and more body language will be brought in and not replace but support verbal commands. Barley has been trained this way and continues to be trained with body language. It’s something to consider and in theory will stop the having to repeat / call in a field to a certain extent. I’m working on the arms outstretched mean come. Of course, the key to this is that your doggy is paying visual attention, should this not be the case the fact you’ve done verbal is a back up. Along with this you do as a result have to work on the focus part of training. Getting your dog to pay attention so they can see the signals is something key to the entire thing working.

Using body and hand signals is something a lot of trainers will advise and so far it’s working for our two. I’d definitely recommend trying it if you haven’t. Dogs seem (well our two) to ‘get it’ more and quicker than them having to learn verbal commands.