My Dogs' Verbal and Marker Cues
04 Jul 2025
A friend of mine’s dogs are injured and I’m still not able to run my own dogs. So I offered to let her run my dogs at an upcoming International handling workshop. So I thought I’d write up a list of the verbal cues I use for my dogs to help her out. I thought it might be useful to others to see as well, so here it is.
Marissa did a great job running both Snap! and Spark. In the photo you can see her cueing a threadle wrap and getting down the line for a blind cross.
Verbal Cues
| Action | Snap! | Spark |
|---|---|---|
| Start line | position on side “Sit” “Ready”. Release is obstacle name. | |
| Turn on flat | left/right | |
| Jump | jump | |
| Jump wrap right | ray-ray | |
| Jump wrap left | lee-lee | |
| Jump soft turns | jump-right/jump-left | |
| Back side slice | out | |
| Back side to a wrap | out-ray-ray/out-lee-lee | |
| Threadle slice | in-in | |
| Threadle slice to wrap | in-in-ray-ray/in-in-lee-lee | |
| Threadle wrap | check-check | |
| Dog walk | walk-it - touch - free (2o2o) | walk-it - feet-feet (running) |
| A Frame | Frame - feet-feet (running) | Frame (running) |
| Teeter | bah-bah-bah - free (4-on down) | Teeter - touch-touch - free (4-on standing) |
| Tunnel | tunnel | |
| Tunnel bypass | check-check | check-check or chute-chute |
| Weaves | weave - go-go-go-go | |
| Weave bypass | check-check - go-go-go-go | |
| Head check | Snap! | Spark |
| Continue forward taking obstacle on your line | RUN-RUN | |
Why so many? For the types of courses I run and my (slower) speed compared to my dogs I won’t always be in the correct location to use the physical cues my dogs need to correctly perform an obstacle/sequence. Many of these are quite specialized and if you run “regular” AKC or CPE courses you will never need them.
Do I always use them? No. Only if I can’t use appropriate physical cues or if I need to add the verbal cue to clarify my physical cues.
Marker Cues
If you aren’t familiar with Marker Cues here’s Sarah Brueske on the FDSA podcast where she discusses them Getting Started: Marker Cues & Foundation Skills.
| Action | Snap!/Spark |
|---|---|
| Nose Touch | nose |
| Release to toy | get it |
| Come to me for reward | yes |
| Come to me to tug | tug |
| Keep doing what you are doing | good-good |
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