Today I want to welcome our guest blogger Anne Murphy. Anne is an awesome deaf dog foster mom. Often Deaf Dogs Rock features Anne’s foster babies up for adoption in our Adoptable Deaf Dog section and Anne does a wonderful job getting them started. She also has a new blog called Two Deaf Pitties so be sure to check her out. The following post is from her blog.
This is Lesson 5: sit.

 

Lesson 5: Sit

By Anne Murphy – TwoDeafPitties.com

Training method: Treat

Sit is a vital command in any dog’s repertoire. It is often used as a precursor to another command, like sit and stay, or sit and high-five, and it is important for your pup to know this one so she can greet people politely. Teaching your deaf dog to sit is super easy and can often be taught in just a few minutes! My little helper in these photos is my current deaf foster puppy, Nani.

 

 

Step 1:  Start by holding a treat between

your thumb and index finger, and holding

your hand away from your body with your palm up.

 

 

Step 2: Once your dog smells the treat,slowly raise your palm up.

Your hand should be close to your dog’s head and slightly

above it so that she is not tempted to walk forward for the treat.

 

 

Step 3:  Lure your dog into the sitting position.

It may take a minute for her to figure it out, so be patient.

 

 

Step 4:  As soon as her bum touches the ground,

flash the “good dog” sign and give her the reward!

Eventually you will be able to phase out the treat, but the palm-up raising hand will remain the sign for sit.

Thanks Anne for being our guest blogger today. Be sure to check out Anne’s new blog at TwoDeafPitties.com

 

 

 

Note from Christina – Deaf Dogs Rock: I use the “good job” or “good boy sign” (which is a thumbs up) when Nitro is doing something right and sometimes he gets a treat and sometimes he doesn’t get a treat with the thumbs up. It just lets him know he is doing something right. To mark the right behavior during training for clicker training we do a three finger flash or an open flash of the hand and that flash is always followed by a treat no matter what. So one is for “good job or good boy” = treat sometimes. The other marker (open flash) is a training tool to mark the correct behavior “Yes that is right” = Open flash of hand = Treat 100% of the time.

For the commands you can make up your own signs, use your hearing dog hand commands or you can do ASL. I do encourage all of our shelters, rescues and foster moms out there to use a sign command that folks can look up and watch on line. For this reason, I recommend Alisha McGraw’s ASL sign video so the shelter folks and the adoptive families can all be on the same page.

Here is the ASL video from Alisha.