The hand signal for no is the making of a fist. Hold your hands around torso level, elbows in toward your body and hands at a 45-degree angle, fingers apart, and wave your hands back and forth as you say “OK” or “free,” or whatever verbal release cue you’ve chosen. Over the years, I’ve used a variety of different hand signals, but I’ve settled on “jazz hands” as my favorite. The release cue ensures that your dog will only break the sit, down, and stay when you ask. Sit, down, and stay are useless without a release command. Don’t ask your dog to hold the stay position for very long at first - just a couple of seconds - and then use a release word and hand signal (see below) and call him to you. Stay is a tough command to learn, since it involves inaction rather than action. Start with your dog in a sit position and ask him to stay, holding your palm away from your body, facing your dog. This hand signal is typically taught in conjunction with the command, so most dogs have seen it before, but it’s a good one to reinforce. The hand signal for stay is a raised palm facing toward your dog. Woman giving the down command by Shutterstock. This hand signal tends to be easy to learn, because most people training down initially train by luring the dog’s nose to the ground with a treat, so there’s sort of a hand signal already associated with this command. Again, you can hold a treat between your fingers to gather his attention onto your hand. With your palm down, move your elbow from about chest level to mid-thigh (depending on your dog’s height - lower for shorter dogs). The hand signal for down is the opposite of the sit signal.

Sit hand signal dogs