Jack Haskins: Hand signals best with verbal commands

DEAR OLD TRAINER: You always advise using a hand signal in conjunction with a verbal command. Why are they important? Also, how do you teach a hand signal and how do you decide which hand signal goes with which command?

A: You are correct. Every time I teach a dog a verbal command I include a hand signal as part of the training.

They are important because they enable you to control your dog no matter how far away he is as long as he can see the signal. I have had a number of dogs lose their hearing as they aged, but I was still able to communicate with hand signals. If some sound drowns out my voice my dogs still know what I want by watching my signals.

For many commands, such as getting in or out of the car, I don’t even have a verbal command, just the hand signal.

You may not be aware of it, but your dog is already learning body signals just by observing your gestures or facial expressions as you give commands.

The nice thing about teaching signals is that no additional work is required to add them to your training routine. Go through the same steps you do when teaching a dog the command and use the signal at the same time you give the verbal command. Remember, dogs are masters of body language and will learn and obey a hand signal faster than a verbal command.

It makes no difference what hand signal you use as long as you use the same one every time for the command in question. The important consideration is to select a hand signal you can remember because your dog doesn’t care what the signal is.

Hand signals give you another way to communicate with your dog and the more you interact with him the happier he is.

DEAR OLD TRAINER: I would love to teach Happy, our 4-year old beagle, to be a Frisbee dog, but he shows no interest at all. He won’t even retrieve a ball let alone a Frisbee. Is there any way to train him to do it?

A: Not likely. Some breeds like to retrieve, some don’t. Beagles are a wonderful breed, friendly and loving with adults, kids and other dogs, but I have never seen one show any interest in chasing a Frisbee.

Beagles are bred for a different type of work than retrieving. They are scent dogs, genetically predisposed to find the scent of prey and follow it until they find the animal that left it. Most beagle owners don’t even let their dogs off the leash except in fenced areas because if they find a scent that interests them, they are long gone and you may not see them until the next day.

They have a reputation for being stubborn and hard to train, but I believe it is because they are concentrating so hard on what their DNA tells them to do they have no room left for concentration on anything else.

Add in the fact they have no interest in retrieving and you have a dubious prospect for a future Frisbee dog.

This story was originally published October 8, 2015 at 2:45 PM with the headline "Jack Haskins: Hand signals best with verbal commands."