How to Teach Your Dog Hand Signals

Teach your dog what hand signals mean! This video is sponsored by BarkBox! Get a free BarkBox when you sign up for a 6 or 12 month subscription at

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Sources:
Making Inferences About the Location of Hidden Food: Social Dog, Causal Ape:

The Domestication of Social Cognition in Dogs:

List of ASL suggestions for hand signals:

Do Dogs Get the Point? A Review of Human-Dog Communication Ability:

The Early Ontogeny of Human-Dog Communication:

The Domestication Hypothesis for Dogs’ Skills with Human Communication: A Response to Udell et al. (2008) and Wynne et al. (2008):

Dog Intelligence Science:

Today’s episode is sponsored by barkbox The last time you saw this Vizsla he Didn’t even have a name yet one pleased To announce his name is now Mars you Look like a Mars click thumbs up for Mars subscribe to my channel and grab a Copy of America’s number one Best-selling dog training book today We’re gonna focus on how to teach your Dog hand signals so that you can Dramatically improve your communication If you’ve ever had a puppy biter you’ll Know that trying to get them interested In the toy when they start biting you Can be really hard for some reason he’d Still prefer to bite my flesh my watch Even would you want to chew watch now Sometimes you just have to make the toy More exciting or maybe just get a more Exciting toy we got your very first bark Box that way you don’t have to bite on Me it’s already working this is great if You would just be a little patient you Just go ahead and do it yourself Looks like Knights of the Hound table He’s not biting me anymore this is good I like that he’s biting this instead This is some type of official document What are you doing from a dog training Perspective one of the cool things about A toy like this is the wings right here Are crinkly but the rest of the toy is Normal there’s even a squeak in it Squirrel Lancelot’s it’s amazing how a

New toy can spark a dog’s interest in Training and playing that makes barkbox Worth it all by itself so they claim These treats are good for training sit Oh my gosh you don’t even need me just Get a bark box I don’t even smell like dog treats if You didn’t know they were dog treats You’d probably eat one yourself better Without the plastic man you tell bark Box your dog’s size how tough a chewer They are and any dietary preferences That apply to your dog and then you get A specially curated box with super Original toys and treats delivered to You every month every one of you is Gonna get a free bark box just go to Bark box comm slash dog training and Sign up for a 6 or 12 month subscription That link will be below there are two Main ways that you want to communicate With your dog you want to teach them how To respond to hand signals as well as The spoken word for example you might be Talking on the phone and you want to Just be able to subtly tell your dog hey I don’t stay without having to say Anything also in some situations some Dogs respond better to words and others To hand signals this varies from dog to Dog and even within the same dog for Example some dogs will be more Responsive to something like sit with a Hand signal but if you tell them to stay

They’re more likely to do so with a Verbal signal see if your dog becomes Accustomed to listening to you and Looking to you for direction it’s Gonna be a lot easier to generally Communicate with them you’ll find that Hand signals tend to evolve and emerge From just natural interaction with your Dog for example a lot of you might have Taught your dog how to sit by kind of Luring them back just like that sit good Job and that might have turned into hate Sit like that and ultimately many of you Can probably get your dog to sit just by Doing that right that’s a hand signal in This case you don’t go from the lure to Your final hand signal all in one motion You slowly evolve it when it comes time To decide what kind of hand signal you Want to use you can make them up use any Hand signal that’s natural to you now Let’s take stay next I probably use this Hand signal more than anything I mean It’s like a giant stop sign for your dog As a general rule of thumb it’s a good Idea to accompany your hand signal and The word you’re trying to teach them Simultaneously so that they can begin to Equate both of them to mean the same Thing stay good there’s that little Motion to stay that you kind of do just Bringing a lot of movements you okay That’s not stay I find that making big Exaggerated signals at first can really

Get hand signal training off to a great Start you want to evolve that hand Signal probably into something a little Bit more casual you know so you don’t Look ridiculous stay good once your dog Is staying with a stay like that now Maybe you might want to do a stay good Now let’s see if he’ll do it without me Even saying anything because you want to Be able to use them both interchangeably Okay Mars is learning how to speak so let’s See if we can refine a nice hand signal For this usually when I teach a dog to Speak I’ll hold up the treat until they Say hey give me that treat and of course I’ll reward them for vocalizing it first So my goal here is to see if I can get Him to reliably speak when I hold it up Like this and then I’m gonna try to Evolve that hand signal and there’s Something a little bit more creative yes I’ll take that good job yes speak yes Good speak Oh excellent he’s really speaking Reliably here when I have a treat in my Hand and I say speak like that I’d like To see if I could get him to speak when I go speak like that speak good did you See how I kind of move my fingers a Little bit to try and phase it in right There right as he was doing it to let Him know they kind of meeting the same Thing Oh speak good job very nice yeah

That was a little bit of a speak there Like that I think he’s starting to get It yeah I’ll take it that’s good yes You’re getting it yes sometimes you Might find that it’s really easy to to Use an existing hand signal that your Dog already knows for example Mars over Here knows how to shake hands but when I Put out my hand like this for a shake He’s like oh I know what that means wave Is where they lift up their paw but They’re not actually making contact with You so that was almost good I’m gonna Reward that but we’re gonna use that to Show him how to wave see if I just do That he doesn’t know what I’m talking About wave good did you see what I did There kind of psyched them out a little Bit and gave him a different hand signal To look at and wave good right there He’s anticipating the shake but I’m Pulling my hand out at the last second Wave good job multiple studies have Concluded that domestic dogs have a Really special aptitude for Understanding or visual signals for Example a study in the journal science Showed that dogs respond to certain Visual cues from humans much better than Wolves raised by humans and also much Better than chimpanzees – you really Seem starting to get it now if these Findings continue to hold true then it’s A key difference between dogs and wolves

And why our approach should take into Account the predisposition that dogs Have when taking direction from people Hypothesis supported another in the Journal animal behavior looks Specifically at young puppies I mean We’re talking really young puppies so Young that they hadn’t even had any Experience working with people yet and Even these puppies could interpret basic Human pointing gestures pretty quickly Looks like Mars can respond to a human Pointing gesture already this means walk In a circle around me constantly now of Course a lot of people make the Assumption that this means that a dog is Born knowing what a human Point means but actually it indicates That they’re born with a special Aptitude for learning with this and Other human signals mean probably Because dogs have been selectively bred To be great at learning to communicate With us click thumbs up for Mars he did An awesome job today get your free bar Clocks at barkbox comm slash dog Training when you sign up for a 6 or 12 Month subscription I’ll have a link in The description subscribe to my channel If you haven’t already thank you so much To all of our patrons who helped fund These videos you guys are amazing and Pick up a copy of my best-selling dog Training book dog training revolution

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