Verbal cue coinciding with hand signal?

griffinej5

It depends on what you are trying to establish. If you do them together, the dog is probably attending the hand signal. It's far more salient to most dogs. If you already have one, and you want to transfer to the other, it should be new cue, old cue (probably with a time delay between these). If you did it the other way around, the dog would just do it on the original cue, and you would never get to the other one.

Interesting, thank you for this new bit of info. Hard to believe that I could be so off about something like this. This should be basic stuff by now! I've never read what you are saying here, nor seen it like this anywhere. Even in The Culture Clash, which is where I learned how to do Basic Obedience... teaches verbal cue then hand signal... and nothing else. Jean Donaldson even says to wait up until 45 seconds to make the dog "think" before you give in to a hand signal. Ms. McConnell also made no mention of what you are talking about either in her seminars. I'm completely puzzled tonight.

 The short answer is that dogs tend to understand body language cues much more quickly, but it really doesn't matter which you teach first.  A cue is a cue is a cue.  And, all you need remember is that when you want to change from one cue to another, you use the new cue, then the old cue, until the dog starts anticipating by responding to the new cue first, without waiting for the old cue to be given.

ShelterDogs

griffinej5

It depends on what you are trying to establish. If you do them together, the dog is probably attending the hand signal. It's far more salient to most dogs. If you already have one, and you want to transfer to the other, it should be new cue, old cue (probably with a time delay between these). If you did it the other way around, the dog would just do it on the original cue, and you would never get to the other one.

Interesting, thank you for this new bit of info. Hard to believe that I could be so off about something like this. This should be basic stuff by now! I've never read what you are saying here, nor seen it like this anywhere. Even in The Culture Clash, which is where I learned how to do Basic Obedience... teaches verbal cue then hand signal... and nothing else. Jean Donaldson even says to wait up until 45 seconds to make the dog "think" before you give in to a hand signal. Ms. McConnell also made no mention of what you are talking about either in her seminars. I'm completely puzzled tonight.

Sorry I forgot to get back to this for a bit.

A bit of that comes out of my behavior analysis text books. I'd probably not wait 45 seconds to give the hand signal. That seems like an extremely long delay. By then, the connection between the two is probably gone. What I would probably do is give the verbal, then wait a second or two, and then give the visual. I would then gradually increase this delay. Then you would know at what point they started to get the verbal, and you could drop the visual.

I didn't watch the video, so can't comment on Trish's actions vs. words. But it doesn't matter really which cue you teach first - verbal or hand signal - you can always add the second one on later. It is possible that the dogs pick up on the hand signals quicker, because they are so visual, but I have not seen much difference in my own dog's behaviours to indicate that I should teach one before the other.

I've taught my dogs both verbals and signals for most of their behaviours. Part of it is functional, part of it is just for fun. Some things I taught the verbal first, hand signal later, and some I taught the hand signal first. Just depended on what I was working on.