Yorkshire Terrier Training – Training your Yorkie to obey commands with hand signals

Training your Yorkshire Terrier to learn hand signals is an easy way to teach him to follow basic commands. Yorkies are stubborn and can be difficult to train, but using hand signals instead of verbal commands will help you take charge of your dog’s behavior. Here are some tips on how to get started with this type of training.

• Wait until your Yorkie is around six months old to begin hand signal training. Before this age, he will be too young and may get confused.
• Teach a verbal command to ‘sit’ before beginning any other training. Once your dog has mastered this verbal command, he can begin hand gesture training.
• Go out where the light is very bright. Order your Yorkshire Terrier to “sit.” When you sit down, make the hand signal to sit down, which is open palm down. Push your hand down two or three times while saying the word “sit down.”
• Do this repeatedly about ten times. If your dog obeys your verbal command every time, he is ready to go. Then try using just the hand signal, making sure your dog looks directly at you when he does it.
• Wait about an hour and start this process again from the beginning. Do this early in the day, before your Yorkie is too tired.
• As soon as your dog masters this first hand signal command, he is ready to begin training with other commands.

I encourage you to learn more about how to train your Yorkshire Terrier.