Teaching Your Dog To Sit
Part of my Essential Dog Training book, which may be purchased on Amazon.
So, I never actually included this is the first 3 versions of this book. How could I not think this was ‘essential’?
Teaching the ‘sit’ might be basic, but done to a high standard, well, not to basic.
Have a read & if you like it, buy the e-book, its cheaper than a garage sarnie & much more satisfying.
The Sit & Sit Stay Command
I wanted to start this chapter with probably the biggest mistake people make when teaching a stay and that is never call a dog from any type of stay (a recall), and then reward your dog. But there’s more, read on…
OK, now I’ve got that out of the way, I will begin.
The sit. Probably one of the easiest things to teach your dog. That is a one-second sit, and the dog then wanders off and ignores you. But how do we make sure the sit is reliable, how it can help in practical terms and how do we extend duration — the stay?
Making the sit reliable
A sit is only as useful (apart from comfort from the dogs’ point of view) as the length of time you needed it to happen to solve the issue at the time. Imagine a dog that only ever touched his bum on the floor, got up then proceeded to ignore you?
A sit means to wait while something happens and that could be for any reason apart from learning general obedience. So, in general terms once you have taught your dog to lower its’ bum to the floor, the skill comes in teaching him to stay there until you say ‘ok’, or release them.
All sounds a bit bossy doesn’t it, but at the end of the day, we are the dog’s guardian and we ‘usually’ know what’s best, so the sit might be for their safety or when you read about Nala, further on in the e-book, for the other dogs’ safety in her case.
There are a couple of ways we can do this; the most popular way is the food lure and it’s the way I prefer and would teach. Remember when using food, your skill in teaching with food is only as good as your skill weaning off food.
You don’t want a dog that will only sit for food.
The food lure method
Take a small piece of food in your hand, put it near to the dogs’ nose and lift your hand in a way that also lowers their bum. Some dogs really don’t get this, especially when they are a puppy. It takes practice and also relies on handler competency.
You can use your other hand to help them by putting a bit of pressure on their bum and helping them sit. Whatever you do, the hand gestures you use in these first sessions will become hand signals, so don’t use physical means for more than a couple of times.
As you will find out later, all of my methods start *without* commands. Of course, your dog doesn’t know what words mean, so once they are learning how the bum should be on the floor, you can stop using your other hand.
Once they are becoming good at sitting with just a bit of food, you can start adding in a command. Add the ‘sit’ command when the dogs bum is on the floor and not before. We are pairing the command to teach it, not asking them to sit because they don’t yet know what it means.
Now you need to only have food in your hand some of the time, you will always reward, but you won’t always have food in your hand used as a lure.
Then as your dog becomes even better at this and starts to learn what sit means and your command is followed with an actual sit, this is when you start changing your rewards. By this I mean using verbal praise. Use both food and verbal praise intermittently.
Rewards can eventually become a smile, a thumbs up, something verbal that elicits a tail wag, a gentle head stroke; whatever your reward is, it must be interpreted as such.
The sit stay
Follow all of the above regarding the stay, then withhold your reward for 1–2 seconds. Never progress on to longer stays until the stage before is well taught.
Dogs learn by success not by being corrected.
If you were using a clicker or the clicker concept (saying ‘good’), your click would happen when your dog’s bum is on the floor or the stay would be marked by a withheld click (the click ends the behaviour and so does your reward), again just do this for 1–2 seconds.
Duration and Difficulty
Duration and difficulty may be done by moving away one step, or if you have a particularly fidgety dog, lift an arm up or move a leg but don’t actually step away. Increase this difficulty level with care.
When moving onto a sit stay and creating distance, step away just one step, then step back. Vary this by for example, step away, wait for a count of 2, then step back.
Remember what I said earlier about not calling to recall when a dog is in a stay? You will just ruin your dogs’ stay. That’s not to say you will never do this, but it is reserved for more advanced training. A formal recall is done from a stay, so bear that in mind, your dog must know the difference and have learned both well.
Once your dog is proficient at the sit and stay exercise (I mean rock solid), then and not until then can you start with emergency stays or stops.
The emergency stop or distance stay/stop relies on the learned command, and this is your command word, whistle and or hand signal. All of which you will have taught at the basic beginner level. So, bringing that learned command in now depends on how well you taught it at the beginning.
Get your dogs’ attention first when doing your first one, so maybe don’t try it with them too far away. If it fails, make it as easy as it needs to be for the dog to succeed. Exaggerate your commands, maybe even repeat (not something I will usually recommend) and assuming success, follow with a really great reward, like a tasty treat, throw a favourite toy or just run around making a big deal of it with your dog.
When you read Nala’s story further on in the e-book, this was the key to our success. An emergency stop, the crucial stay where you are until I say otherwise, and the effective reward.
