Signs of the week: "Good Girl!" and "Sit"

Once you have trained a dog with hand signs, it is hard to ever go totally back to voice-only commands. Even our hearing dogs are trained using signs for many of the basics since they are so effective.

Juneau is learning our sign for "Good Girl" (a thumbs-up) this week. This is a great lesson, because she learns it by getting treats and a thumbs-up repeatedly until she understands that thumbs-up is like getting a treat and means we are pleased. Once this connection is established, it will be a useful sign for so many other training areas: housebreaking, playing with appropriate toys, going to her crate, following other commands, etc.

We are doing sit in the traditional way, with the treat over the nose, but we give the "sit" sign as well when she is starting to sit and the "Good Girl" when we give her the treat once she has gotten it. Soon we will just make the sign and she will sit, and we will reinforce it eventually with just the thumbs-up.

We will try to post a video of her working on her signs later in the week!