Hand Commands Vs. Verbal Commands

 Chain.  Hold out your hand.  Say, "Walker, spin", spin hand.  Repeat as long as he needs, 5X?  10X?  Hold out your hand, say "Walker, spin", count to three, spin hand.  Repeat several times.  Walker will associate the "spin" with the hand cue and preempt the hand command.  Some dogs are very methodical and even though they know the hand spin is coming after the word, will still wait for the hand spin.  If your dog is like that, first work on a shorter hand spin and shorter hand spin then introduce the cue.  Continue to shorten the hand spin until he is spinning with the cue and just your hand in position.  I would then show him a treat from a few feet away and give the verbal cue with the hand moving out towards him and see if you can get him to spin from a few feet away.  Toss the treat to him.

Maura gave great advice on how to fade a hand cue.

But, to not need a hand cue in the first place, you could always try free shaping behaviors like this with a clicker. A clicker is a small noise maker that makes a sound comparable to someone clicking their tongue. You pair the sound of the click with a treat, so the dog quickly learns that what they were doing at the moment they heard the click, earned them a treat.

So for a spin, choose a direction you want to teach, and wait for any movement in that direction. So if you are attempting to teach your dog spin to the left, any time he moves his head, or a foot, to the left, click and treat. After a few repititions, he will be eagerly moving his body to the left, and as he starts to "get it" up your requirements for a click. So instead of just a slight move of his head or foot to the left, wait for an entire step in that direction. Eventually, he will be eagerly offering you an entire spin for a click. When he is frequently offering a spin for a click, start adding the cue "spin!" right before he performs the behavior, and click-treat. After a few repititions and training sessions, he should eagerly be offering spin on cue. :) As dogs get more and more "clicker savvy" they start learning the rules of clicker training, and quickly excell at learning new behaviors that are taught via free shaping.

Here's a site with lots of clicker training info.  http://www.clickertraining.com/  You can get a clicker at almost any pet store. 

It can sometimes be difficult to get rid of a hand signal when the dog was trained with lures. The dog can become really reliant on seeing the hand signal, and don't even think to offer the behavior if the hand signal isn't happening.

Clickers are a LOT of fun. There are a lot of different resources available for clicker training, and quite a few good books. Anything by Karen Pryor, or any books that say "A Karen Pryor Clicker Book" even if they are not written by her, are great!  The first behavior I teach most all dogs I clicker train is hand or stick targeting, as it's very easy to do, and it's a great way for both the handler AND dog to "get" what clicker training is all about.

Here is a quick review of doing targeting (I personally use my fist): first, load the clicker. Then, offer the dog the desired object, in this case, your first. The goal is to have the dog touching his nose to your first on the cue "touch." At first, click-treat any time the dog looks at or moves his nose towards your hand. I start with my fist fairly close to their face. Not ON their face, but maybe six inches away. As that behavior becomes more frequent, start click-treating only the behaviors better than average. So moving closer to your hand, or actual bumps. JACKPOT (quick a bunch of treats one after the other) any time the dog touches your hand with his nose. Most dogs will immediately bump your fist because they are expecting a treat to come from it... this is acceptable! It does not matter what their initial motivation is to touch your fist. Make sure the treats are coming from the hand you are clicking with, NOT the hand you want them to target. I usually toss the treats to the dog or onto the floor to keep the dog moving.

If your time is good (clicking the second the dog touches your hand with his nose), pretty soon you will have a dog that is constantly bumping your hand with their nose. At that point, start moving your hand around. So lower to the ground, higher up, underneath a chair, further away from the dog, etc. Start slowly though, as if you up the criteria too fast, the behavior may break down. So slowly move your hand a few inches up or down, or further away from the dog. When the dog is jumping up to hit your hand, or running across the room, you can start adding the verbal cue "touch." Right before the behavior happens say "touch" and click-treat as usual.

 Dogs "get it" very quickly if your timing is good. I just taught a dog who had not been clicker trained prior, "touch" in about 2 sessions (about five to ten minutes each) and I have her jumping up off the ground and running across the yard to "touch" my fist, and have started adding the cue.

I recommend you buy clickers 'in bulk' as if you are anything like me, you will LOSE THEM all the time. :)

Just about anything! The sky is the limit. :) Start slow though... it's easy to get a bunch of ideas and then get confused about what you are teaching. So make sure each training session is dedicated to just ONE behavior for now! As you and your dog get more clicker savvy, you can start incorporating more things into each session.

 You could teach him to retrieve the remote control for the TV, your car keys, a blanket when you're cold. My aunt has taught their Pit Bull to run upstairs, grab a blanket off their bed, and bring it to them when they are sitting on the couch. Talk about convenient! Or you can teach speak and quiet, on a cue, or you can teach her to load up into the car, her crate, or a piece of furniture. Shake, beg, rollover, play dead, high five, jump through a hoop.... There are tons of ideas out there, really.

A fun game people like to play is 101 Things to do With a Box. If you create a (free and easy) account at clickertraining.com you can access the article here: http://www.clickertraining.com/node/167

Just remember to not lure the dog if you do not have to. A lot of behaviors can be broken down to the point you do not need one. If you DO feel the need to lure a dog fade the lure SUPER quickly.

Maura

Walker will associate the "spin" with the hand cue and preempt the hand command.  Some dogs are very methodical and even though they know the hand spin is coming after the word, will still wait for the hand spin.  If your dog is like that, first work on a shorter hand spin and shorter hand spin then introduce the cue.

My Lab was easy to change to a vocal signal  are my poodles like that ? Not much at all. They pick up hand signals really easy which i usually introduce after the usual clicker training sequence. In the drop that we teach our obedience dogs, our first signal is  a bit primitive but gets a lovely fast  lay back. It is an example of a salient signal. My oldest will drop on a shoulder movement.:)

Obviously we wish to change the signal to somthing that doesn't hurt our backs and looks nice . One way is to change to a verbal and then change the hand signal which is what i would do with many dogs. Fo rmy poodle i just slowly evolved the had signal over time.

I always ask this annoying question do you really have to have a vocal signal? They seem much harder for dogs to decode . I pretty much go on signals alone with a few basic vocal cues.

TheCanineDirectory

I've been trying to teach my border collie/lab mix dog, Walker, some cool little tricks. The past few days, we worked on having him spin, but he'll only do it if i do the motion with my hand around him. I started off by making him sit, then bringing a treat around him, making him do a 360, then giving him the treat once he turns all the way around. But now he'll only spin if I make that motion for him to spin. Does anyone have any advice on how I can verbally get him to spin by saying "Spin"?

Easy.  Dogs learn body language cues first (their native language, after all).  So, once you have the dog confirmed on the hand signal, all you need do is continue it for a while, but say "spin" just ahead of the hand motion.  When introducing a new cue that you want to transfer to, you always issue the new cue first, then the old - that way, the dog learns eventually to anticipate the second cue when he hears the first.  Then, at some point, he no longer needs the hand cue.  The first time he responds only to the voice cue, "jackpot" him by giving him 4-5 treats instead of one!  A Border Collie should pick this up in no time.  But, keep the hand signal strong, too, by using it once in great while.  I always maintain both hand and voice cues for my dogs - helps if they ever lose vision or hearing in old age:-)

TheCanineDirectory

Wow I love the support I am getting with this forum! Thank you very much Tenna. Walker and I are going to have a lot of fun tomorrow :) Does anybody have some good trick ideas that I can try to teach him? I thought about turning on and off lights, but he's way too short :/ LOL

There's a neat book with 101 Dog Tricks that I use for ideas when I teach classes, since I'm always having to tailor the curriculum to dogs' various breed predispositions, sizes, and physical abilities.  Some of the easiest to teach are "weave through the handler's legs" or backward heeling.

I recommend you buy clickers 'in bulk' as if you are anything like me, you will LOSE THEM all the time. :)

I bought a box of 250 not too long ago, and lose them anyway;-)))  I try to have one in my bag, in my truck, and in the barn (nothing disappears from the barn with my attack horse in there lol)

• I started off by taking a treat, and circling it over his head, making him spin around and follow it. When he completed the spin, I gave him the treat. I did this until he could easily connect him spinning around with me giving him a treat (5-10 min?).
• Now he was hooked on the hand motion, so I constantly repeated the word "spin" as I dragged the treat over his head.
• Then I slowly did less and less of the hand motion until he knew that "spin" meant to spin.
• Once he got to this point, it was all repetition; the more we did it, the better he got