Whilst human beings are fundamentally verbal creatures who perhaps conveniently forget that we are animals at heart, the evolution of dogs has not enabled them to discover the joys of language in quite the same way. People often speak to dogs as if they are children learning to speak, and bafflingly expect them to comprehend. The fact is that most dogs understand body language much more readily than they do the spoken word.
The old-fashioned methods of training dogs involved a great deal of physical coercion. Pushing down on the dog's hindquarters in order to make them sit, pulling them around, using choke chains, shouting at the dog if he displeases, that sort of thing. This did not encourage a respectful, warm and loving relationship between owner and dog. It was more likely to engender fear in the dog, who was confused as to why the owner behaved in this way. Some may argue that it worked in some cases, but at what cost to the relationship between man (or woman) and dog?
Modern dog training methods stress the attitude of the dog in relation to his position in a dog pack. If packs of wild wolves or dogs are observed, there is a great deal of body language being exhibited and the animals are reading physical signals from each other regarding dominance, submission, pack bonding, appeasement etc. What is also relevant is the amount of physical contact and love between the dogs in a pack. Dog training is all very well, by all means civilise the dog, show him the rules and what you expect of him, but show him love and affection too in an appropriate way. A rub behind the ears, or a tickle under the chin, just being with your dog and casually stroking him are all ways of showing your love and encouraging the bond between you.
The fact is that dogs can understand a few words of human language, but these words have to be contextualised and given relevance by the use of body language and hand signals, along with positive reinforcement in the form (usually) of food rewards. Basically, you begin by asking the dog to perform the action you want via hand signals accompanied by a treat. For a sit, you might have a food treat in your hand as you tilt your hand up and back in front of the dog's nose. This makes him raise his head and tilt it backward, hopefully this makes him tilt his body back and end up in a sitting position. He gets the treat, he realises what he did right. A bit more of this and you start using the word "sit" whilst he does it. Eventually the hand signal becomes relatively redundant, and the dog responds to the word sit. He has learned in a way what sit means. However, you will always find that the hand signal works as well as the word. The two together is ideal. It seems that the dog can forget the words much more readily than he forgets that all-important hand signal.
So for most dogs hand signals are much more important than words in dog training. Exceptions to this may be blind or deaf dogs. Deaf dogs cannot understand words at all so they must be trained exclusively by hand signals. Blind dogs have to be trained using words and food treats.
