If your dog responds 4 or 5 times out of 5, your dog is on his way to understanding the hand signal! Now you’re ready to add the verbal cue. To teach a hand signal for “sit”, just move your hand *exactly* the same way as you did with the lure, but without any treats in your hand. So, what do we do about this? How do we teach our dogs both the verbal cue and the hand signal? Well, it’s pretty simple! You just have to separate the two!įirst and foremost, if you have used a lure to teach your dog to sit, you need to get rid of the food in your hand AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. Overshadowing takes place when a certain stimulus (“sit!” is not noticed by the animal because there is a more salient (more evident) stimulus (hand signal) around. What happened? Why didn’t Fluffy sit? She clearly KNOWS sit! When we give both a verbal cue and a hand signal simultaneously, our dogs will only ‘hear’ one of those cues. The owner then assumes the dog knows what “sit” means…. at least until they say “sit” without the hand signal and dog does nothing in response. Typically what I see is someone saying “sit!” while lifting their hand.

In fact, based on studies, dogs can learn 160+ words through training and observation! But sometimes we get ‘stuck’, and our dog doesn’t seem to actually be learning the verbal cue separate from the hand signal. That is why they pick up on our hand motions so quickly when we are teaching them sit, down, and other similar obedience cues.ĭogs can EASILY learn both verbal cues AND hand signals. Our dogs probably think we’re crazy just chattering away! I hope that Knox finds it endearing how much I talk to him, even though he understands very little of what I’m actually saying! Dogs, on the other hand, speak primarily through body language. As humans, we primarily use our voices to communicate. Many of us want our dogs to reliably respond to both verbal cues (“sit!”) as well as our hand signals separately.

Using hand signals to train dogs