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Dogs naturally pay attention to body language it’s much harder to teach them to respond to our verbal language. Sometimes people tell me in a very impressed tone that their brother-in-law’s dog follows hand signals without him saying anything! I don’t want to break the spell, so I keep it to myself that yeah, that’s easier. For example, where you previously used a dramatic finger moving all the way to the ground to signify a down, you can now just do a quick point. As the dog catches on, the hand signal that began as a replica of the luring motion becomes smaller and smaller. Feed her a treat from your other hand the moment she is in a “down.” When she’s following the treat to the floor nearly every time, try moving your empty hand to the floor. The dog learns that following an empty hand works just as well. Ideally pup performs exactly as he has been, and you deliver that reward just as quickly, except from the other hand. Once this is all going swimmingly – your pup is offering that behavior about four out of five times – give the verbal cue as you mimic the luring motion with an empty directing hand. Now, the dog links that correct body position with the appropriate cue word. Once you can reliably lure the behavior, you can start saying the cue word as you do that. Initially, our dog model, Luna, confused the smaller signal for down with a somewhat similar cue for “paw.” When she clearly understands this large hand signal, start reducing its size. (The most common mistakes are keeping food too far from the nose and/or moving it too quickly.) The moment the dog’s body is in the right spot, create a marker sound (more on that next) and pop the treat into your dog’s mouth. Move s-l-o-w-l-y so the dog’s body can easily follow.
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Lure your dog’s body into position with a nugget of food that you keep just in front of his nose. (“Oh, I guess ‘sit’ must mean that kitty cat who just walked by.”) Folks always want to start by saying the cue word, but if you keep repeating a word that’s currently meaningless to your dog, she might end up associating it with the wrong thing.
![hand signal to sit for dogs hand signal to sit for dogs](https://www.dog-training-excellence.com/images/0072-sit-hand-signal.jpg)
(Note that this stuff seems awfully complicated when it’s written out, but it’s really not.) Generally, the easiest way to begin teaching behaviors is by using a food lure.