We start all of our dogs out with: positive training, markers, verbal commands, hand gestures, clickers and treats till about 16 weeks old. At about 5 months old we start training the dog with more advance commands. We don’t train our dogs to follow the commands just for a treat. We also use praise, toy motivation and e-collars for more disciplined training. We want each command to be done verbally, and the dogs to do the command with hand gestures.