Happy new year everyone! Hope yours started off on a great note! We have a combo post today....Thursdays Training Tip and FlashBARK Friday! Read Dads training tip and check out some old photos! CLICKER TRAINING DEAF DOGS Our training tip for today is for our fellow deaf dog owners out there. Most new deaf dog owners are lost on how to communicate with their new disABLED dog. Dont worry....COMPLETELY NORMAL! Lucky for us, dogs are actually much better at reading and responding to our body language and postures than they are at responding to auditory signals. This leads us to using HAND SIGNALS! This may come as common sense to some, but for the people that didnt know this....VOILA! That piece of info isnt actually the main tip for today though. The training tip I have for you is on how to adapt the popular Clicker Training method for use with our deaf dogs! Clicker Training was first popularized by Karen Pryor, and is now used by the best and brightest minds in animal training/behavior modification! It uses a simple device that has a button which when pressed makes a click sound. You use this device to communicate to your dog that the behavior he/she has done is correct, and the sound is followed by a tasty treat or play. Im going to provide you with 2 ways you can adapt this method to use with your deaf dog who wont be able to hear the sound of your everyday clicker! Method #1 (My personal favorite and what I use with Tech) -Replace the clicker with a small keychain LED flashlight You use the basic clicker training guidelines but instead of hearing a click your dog will SEE A FLASH! Your dog will quickly learn that anytime he sees that little bright light, he did it right! Method #2 -Use a hand signal in place of the click This method is a bit sloppier in my opinion. Sometimes our bodies timing isnt as snappy as a light or click, but this will still work if you dont have the other tools. The most popular signal I have seen for this is a simple Thumbs up to the dog. In case you need more info on what Clicker Training is here is a link to some good information on that..... clickertraining/get-started Let us know if you have any questions and of course COMMENT COMMENT COMMENT to let us know if this helped you, and SHARE SHARE SHARE to spread the knowledge!
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 16:00:00 +0000