Dog training book reccommendations, please!

commands and markers do best as single words. single syllable is best. short and instant and distinct.

"good" is better used for praise than a marker work. the marker is simply to say "you did that right" while praise is used to reinforce the desire to repeat the behavior. I use toys, praise and food rewards depending on the task I'm teaching, how well the dog knows it and the level of distraction.

I know when neighbors down the street come home lol even if it's as small as a hurrmph and looking in that direction. If the neighbors have company I know it.

Marker word must be different from praise word, got it. It'll be hard to train myself to use a short syllable word, as I always tend to use two syllables (like, I always called my cat named Kit, Kitten. Our cat, Bat, I always call Batman). It'll be hard, but not impossible. No one said training is easy! It'll be so worth it in the end, too!

I'll do my best to socialize my dog properly and well, too. I'm going to ask the trainer tonight for tips on how to do that in my area. I'm so excited to meet her!

dogs can learn lots of different things. just single commands are better that multi-syllable because they sound more "commanding" The are more immediate and when giving multi-word commands, people often tend to make it sound more like a question. Or they end up having more of a conversation and the dog loses the point of what is actually wanted from them.

my dog answers to Singe, Singe-a-licious, Batdog, Dumba**, Freak, Fluffybutt, and Hey You on a regular basis.
He knows that if I say "Watch your face" it means "sit down in the car because I'm going to shut the door and you don't want to get smacked in the face with the door again, do you?" Give you 3 guesses how that command came about lol

and make sure that everyone in the family is on the same page as to what commands and hand signals you use.

You have a dog of many names, haha! The one syllable thing makes sense, and I'm going to work on perfecting it before I get a pup. Specifically, I've decided to train our cats! I'll be working on one command at a time, with sit being the first. This is going to be interesting...

Giving commands in a "commanding" voice is one thing I have to work on. I often give commands as more of a question, and that's not a very good habit on my part!

Of course, like Dainerra, my dog knows a few commands that are more than one word, but I think it's more the tone of my voice than anything else. She knows "Let's go inside", "Do you want to go in the car?", and "Is it time for dinner?"

She also does some things without commands, like going into her crate. I joke we have an unspoken agreement because she knows when she hears one particular treat bag, she is supposed to go in the crate. This makes it difficult sometimes for my room mates to get her in, because she doesn't understand when you tell her to go in!

Some dogs are also very intuned to hand signals versus word signals. Apparently, according to a training I worked with for a bit at the school, dogs are more likely to respond to spoken commands than hand signals. However, my dog is very specific about her hand signals, to the point that if I use the opposite hand, she doesn't know what I mean. She's also much more responsive to hand signals. I use a combination for my dog, but its nice to work with a trainer that can accomodate what works best for your dog (Like the one I worked with here)

I should also say that I think herding breeds tend to be a bit more in tune to hand signals. My cattle dog was the same way.

There's a guy I like to watch a lot on youtube named Zak George. He does a lot of positive reinforcement training and he has a really good video about off leash training. He basically goes through the stages of dog maturity and talks about why its not a great idea to let a dog off leash until about a year, even though they seem like they have great recall. He said in the teenage stage, many dogs get a curious, independent streak which means people tend to lose their dogs about that age. What he said made a lot of sense with the behavioral research I have read about dog maturity. His videos are fun and he is really up beat and sensible in his methods. Not everything was suitable for my dog (and I still believe in saying no...so I'm not fully positive reinforcement) but I enjoy his videos!

Control Unleased is a good book. It was recommended to me when I got my puppy and I thought it was good.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...l unleashed&qid=1450410707&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1