Chapter 4
🐾 Using announcers for technical exercises
A small but useful addition here is the idea of announcers.
If you have seen my Sit from Movement course, you may already know that I use announcers for technical exercises such as:
✅ Sit
✅ Down
✅ Stand
These announcers can be:
➡️ specific words
➡️ small rituals
➡️ touching certain areas of the dog’s body
For example, with my dog:
➡️ scratching the left side = Sit
➡️ scratching the neck = Down
➡️ scratching the right side = Stand
🎯 Why use announcers?
They help the dog understand which exercise is about to come before the actual cue is given.
That means the dog does not have to rely only on listening for the verbal signal.
⚡ Especially useful for the Stand
The Stand can become very exciting because of the small hop we build into the exercise.
Some dogs enjoy it so much that they may start offering the same movement in other exercises as well.
The announcer helps prevent that.
💡 The dog learns:
“Now a Stand is coming.”
and just as importantly:
“Now it is not.”
This makes the different technical exercises clearer and easier to separate.