[nagdu] Sound/body cues?

[Daryl Marie]

hey, Raven,

Tapping the thigh is a "come here".
There's another hand signal for "sit", but I've tried for the last five minutes to describe it and cannot do so.  For some reason that makes no sense to me, Jenny does not like to sit at the top of stairs as we have been trained to do.  This is one of the few hand signals she does not respond to well in particular situations, so at the top of stairs, if she's standing instead of sitting, I will verbally tell her to sit along with the hand signal.  If she doesn't feel like it, which is most of the time, I tap my toe and it's like this lightbulb goes on ("I should sit!")

The snapping to sync up is starting to see results, but it is only effective if I am not wearing gloves or mittens - an impracticality for six months of the year in this northern climate.  The other thing that seems to be working fairly well is if she's walking too fast, I'll do a quick kissy sound twice and, whether or not I use the word "steady" it slows her right down.  This isn't always consistent, but if one doesn't work, the other does.

Daryl
----- Original Message -----
From: Raven Tolliver <ravend729 at gmail.com>
To: NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:18:23 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Re: [nagdu] Sound/body cues?

During training, one of the sound cues my class was taught was to
double tap our thigh to cue our dogs to sit. Dunno why that was the
only cue that had a sound cue rather than a hand signal.
With the Golden Guy, I also snap to get his attention while working.
Most of the time, it's when he is hell bent on going in our routine
direction or through a frequented set of doors, and I want to go
somewhere else. In that instance, I will sweep over his head and point
in the desired direction or just snap in that general direction to get
him to turn immediately.
It's interesting that Jenny doesn't respond to hand signals well.
Whenever I train dogs, I almost always teach hand gestures before I
introduce verbal cues. I understand that all trainers don't do this
though.
When we first got our dogs, a fellow classmate would tap her feet near
her dog's head to get her to stop sniffing while lying down.
I'm curious about snapping while working to get your dog to slow down
or sync up with your stride. Does Jenny seem to be getting the hang of
it?

On 3/19/14, Daryl Marie <crazymusician at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Hey!
> Just been starting to use sound cues with Jenny in addition to, or instead
> of, the original hand signals that she doesn't seem to respond to.  Lately,
> if she's not sitting when she needs to, I tap my foot, or if she's not
> walking steady, I snap my fingers in a rhythm with my feet to focus her a
> bit.
>
> Does anyone have any other pointers?  Successes? Questions...
>
> Daryl and the awesome Jenny girl
>
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-- 
Raven

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