Actually, this topic is just for general thoughts on dog training. Do any of you use hand signals? The only ones I really care about are "come" and "lay down." It's nice to be able to tell your dog to lay down in a group of people without yelling to be heard, and "come" could have its uses. But if you aren't training for obedience trials, I'm not sure what the point is of going any further. (Unless you're deaf, and there was one deaf woman in the class.)

But I don't think you should teach your dog French unless you actually ARE French.

What do you think? What did you teach your dog?

-- Anonymous, September 04, 1999

Answers

You shouldn't becuase every time you tell it "Yes", it will pee on the carpet...

-- Anonymous, September 04, 1999

Well Beth, having sworn at our CATS in both french and english, I'm sure that as a bilingual household, if we got a dog, we'd probbly teach him both english and french commands.

But if you're not in any danger of using french on a daily basis, then why confuse the poor doggie?

*grin*

-- Anonymous, September 04, 1999

I don't see why you would want to teach it French.

My weight trainer shows his Rottweilers and has them trained with hand signals, but again, I don't know what hte point is for ordinary dogs.

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999

Okay, I have to confess: we've been working with the hand signals all week, and they're really fun. Doc seems to like them, too. He stays very focused while we're practicing, and he learned them very quickly. For some reason Jeremy has trouble getting him to lay down (both voice and hand commands), but Doc is really good with me with sit, stay, down, and come on hand signals alone.

We practiced out on the trail, and in camp, and in the park. He "comes" better with a hand signal than with a verbal command.

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999

Well, in an intensely multi-lingual household (9 different languages spoken between the four adults here) our dog was bound to learn something from a foreign language, and he now will sit, stay and come on commands in Polish.

We haven't tried hand signals. Perhaps if we did an obedience course, but I don't know that we'll do that. Remains to be seen. . .

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999