I am new to marker training (the last time I trained a puppy was back in the 80's - yank and crank ), so I am trying to learn as much as I can before the arrival of my MinPin pup in Sept.
Here is one question I have that does not seem to be addressed anywhere: In marker training why is there so much emphasis on introducing a cue command for a behavior and discontinuing the hand or arm movement?
I always felt a source of pride when my AKC obedience dogs performed with (mostly) hand signals only and no voice commands, and always taught them both from the beginning and gradually dropped the voice command.
Do people no longer use hand signals much these days?
Would love to hear comments from people showing in various disiplines and dog sports . . .
I think it depends on what sport you are doing. If I recall correctly, the change of position exercises in Mondio are on a verbal command. Whereas in Utility work in AKC obedience, the signal exercises are on hand signals only.
Personally speaking, I train my dogs to respond to both only hand and only verbal. That way I have my bases covered for whatever sport I am doing :-)
.... why is there so much emphasis on introducing a cue command for a behavior and discontinuing the hand or arm movement? ....
Are you maybe referring to fading a lure?
Yes, for those behaviors that are lured you've essentially already taught a hand signal. It seems a shame to have the dog "unlearn" something so useful!
Dogs aren't verbal creatures. They understand visual signals much better and much easier than they do our verbal cues.
So, if you want your dog to understand verbal cues well, you want to fade the physical lures as quickly as possible and focus on the dog learning the verbal cue. Once the dog has that down, then you add in the hand signals again.
But, if you don't fade the lures/physical cues, the dog will rely on those and never be solid on the verbal cues. And, they pick up the hand signals very quickly, once they have the verbal cues down.
The beauty of marker training is that you will end up with a very versatile dog. As Leih pointed out, andding hand signals back in later is easy.
I made some mistakes training my puppy. Now she looks to much to physical cues and leash pressure to figure out what I want. Undoing this is taking a lot of work!
Hand signals are flashy, and they can have some practical applications, but don't get to caught up on them. Otherwise you will be in my shoes. Retraining a 16 month old dog.
Ah, that all makes sense, Thanks very much for your opinions.
I'm getting antsy waiting for this pup. I'm leaving her with the breeder for the whole ear-taping period, so it gets done correctly, but that leaves me plenty of time to absorb all of these training concepts . . . also Leerburg DVD's are on the way.
Now I'm off to marker train a human, as per Ed's advice . . . this will be fun (the subject knows nothing about dog training, I'm only going to instruct him that he needs to pretend he will do anything for a treat )
I hope you don't mind if I come here with frequent questions!
Cheers,
Cindy
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), so I am trying to learn as much as I can before the arrival of my MinPin pup in Sept.
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