Proper Hand Signals (cues)?

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Hand Signals
Dogs often learn hand signals easier than words. Our language is not natural to dogs. Dogs are very observant of body language, stance and movements. They communicate with each other using body language and gestures; so it makes sense that they understand hand signals better than our language.  Another benefit - hand signals work in noisy locations and work well when your dog is in view, but at a distance and verbal commands become impractical.
Training with hand signals starts with combining your verbal command with the hand signal. Your dog will soon learn to associate your hand signal with the desired action and will respond to either verbal or hand signal. There are no official hand signals for dog training. There are some commonly used signals.
Sit – Start with arm at your side and move your open hand toward your chest, palm up.
 








Down - Motion toward the floor with your hand open flat, palm down.
 








Come - With elbow bent and arm outstretched, move arm to chest
 

There are some pretty universally accepted hand signals, but certainly no laws that say you can't use your own.

These are just my ideas, of course, but here's what I use for hand signals : Sit - I snap my  fingers for her to sit, and I also do ( I know, it;s naughty to do 2 diff ones!) the palm up, from my waist and raise it up. For down, I bring my hand down ( palm down), but I know some people will do the palm up/hand up sign for down. For 'Heel' ( the finish command, where she goes around me to sit on my left) I have my palm facing her, and move it to the right. I don't have any for the 'walking' heel, or come....just use my words so far. Don't know if this will help, or if you can even understand it[] but I thought I would write anyways.

Oh yes, and for Stay it's just my hand in front oh her face, and I move my hand sideways, kind of a 'slashing' motion.

The hand signals I use are basically the hand motions I used when I was luring my dog into position, with some adaptation. I think what I use for sit looks similar to what that picture shows, except that I put my thumb to the tip of my pointer finger, as if I were holding a treat there, because when I taught it I did do that. I think I do about the same thing for down, but with my arm at an angle, not held straight out from my body. For come I extend my pointer finger, and basically point the spot I want Max in and he touches it with his nose. Right now for finish I am guiding him around me with my finger, and i'm not sure where that's gonna go. I just started working on heel, and right now he is just following my finger.  For spinning and turning in a circle, I turn my finger the way I want him to go. High 5 is my hand in a high 5 position and he does it with his left paw. Shake is palm up, and he does it with his right paw. For crawl I sorta walk my pointer and middle fingers. For roll over, I make a big circle with my hand held the same way I do for sit, again because I was previously luring with a treat. He only rolls to his left, so I circle left.  Stand is open hand, fingertips facing down, palm facing the dog with the thumb crossed over the palm. When I was teaching Max sit and down at a distance, I couldn't think of anything else to let him know that when I said it, he had to stop and do it right there since I had used up everything logical with my hands, so I held up my foot. That's now the signal for stop coming towards me, and do whatever I told you right where you are.
There's a guy with a Viszla in the class I have Max in right now, and his signal for down is to raise his hand up into the air. To me that make absolutely no sense, it's in the opposite direction that you want the dog to move in. I had a hard time figuring that one out.

All three of my dogs I got from other people.  I was able to train the chocolate lab hand signals from an obedience class but all three of them have different ways of getting them to sit,stay and so on.  My biggest concern was I do a lot of hiking with them off leash and needed them to come immediately when called.  The yellow and chocolate like to hike a few feet a head of me.  I came up with a whistle command.  One quick loud blow and they all come running back to me.  I know this doesn't help much but do what ever works for you unless you are going to some competing.  I hope you post some pictures.  Love the one under your handle.

Griffinej5,
   Yeah there was one person in training class that did the hand up for down signal, with her Australian shepherd. The only reason I could think of your doing this was that it looked really neat when the dog dropped immediatley when she raised her hand []