Tuesday, March 22, 2011
To Sign or not to Sign...
Through inexcusable circumstance, I've allowed Trevor to go essentially untrained, and the time has come to correct that. Faith, for her part, has exquisite training in a purely sign-based scheme. So should I train Trevor to respond to signs, to conventional verbal commands, or to both? That is the question. Opinions welcome!
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I am no expert, not even close, I don't even have a dog! lol However, I think it would make sense to teach him to respond to both verbal and sign commands. When I did have a pooch, we taught him by using signs and saying the words at the same time. Eventually, we didn't even have to speak, just made the hand gesture and he obeyed.
ReplyDeleteI say: both!
ReplyDeleteIMO hand signals are easier for dogs to understand. I think most times dogs are not listening to us so much as watching our bodies.
Hey - have you seen the Sit Challenge?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtY5U2K-rG0
I mention it because when I tried some of the exercises, I discovered how much one of my dogs relies on body cues. The *word* sit was not trained as well as I'd thought LOL
i'm going to chime in w/ the same sentiment as the others - do both! or rather, as in my case, all 3:
ReplyDeleteat my group beginning obedience class they had us teach commands in 3 parts - first using a lure motion, then transitioning that lure motion to a hand signal (usually the hand signal was similar to the lure motion), and finally adding a verbal command along with the hand sign. this worked out rather well for my dog and all my foster dogs. and it's much easier to give commands w/o speaking - especially in public places. good luck!
It definitely needs to be both since strangers won't know the signs. But I do plan to teach Trevor the same signs that Faith knows. He's actually starting to pick some of them up by osmosis anyway.
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