So, if you are not in a competition, it is best to do obedience training with both your voice and hands, so they are prepared if they lose their hearing later in life.Ī study from the Department of Biology at the University of Naples even set out to determine which type of dog training was better. Teaching hand signals only work if the dog is actively looking at you. In contrast, they are quite adept at reading body language, so learning physical gestures like hand signals is second nature. So they have to discern the unique tones from other words that sound similar and react to them over ambient noises in the environment. In this case, you will have to train him with hand signals instead of by your voice.įurthermore, dogs don’t understand words themselves. Suppose you want to enroll your dog in competitive obedience sports. But if you teach them hand or visual signal early on, communicating with them will never be an issue.

However, just like humans, dogs often start to lose their hearing as they age. For instance, if you are training a deaf dog, they won’t be able to hear your verbal commands. There are numerous situations in which you would want to train your pooch using hand signals.

Why You Should Use Hand Signals To Train Your Pet Here, I will go over the benefits of dog training hand signals and ten of the best ones to teach your pup. One of the biggest is that it may actually be easier for your dog to understand hand signals than your vocal instructions. However, it would be best to consider going a step further and adding in hand signal when training your dog for various reasons. Most people teach their dog verbal commands and stop there. I personally like it as it helps my dog understand me more. But I promise, with enough dedication, you can successfully train a dg using hand signals. Unfortunately, unless you are lucky enough to get one already trained, it takes a lot of time and patience to teach a dog properly. Be consistent with the hand signals that you use.Ī well-trained dog is a pleasure to have.It should also always be accompanied with verbal cues. It’s important to get your dog’s attention first before training with hand signals.These are also helpful in communicating with deaf dogs as well as aging ones that are likely to lose hearing. Because dogs are adept at reading body language, they respond well to hand signals.The common dog training hand signals are used in all sorts of commands such as sit, lie down, come, stay, heel, drop it, etc.FYI: we may earn a commission for qualified purchases made through the links in our articles ( learn more).

Deaf dog hand signals