Training a Puppy to Sit

By far one of the simplest commands to teach your puppy will be the command to sit. Your guests will surely be impressed by your dog responding appropriately to the "Sit" command. However, many other benefits exist that have greater importance like sitting when guests come, or when you run into a neighbor to talk, or to cross a busy intersection. A dog's ability to sit will undoubtedly help keep him out of trouble in many different situations that you will never even think of until the need arises.

Teaching your dog to sit will be simple for one good reason, you can ask him to do it for any reason that you like so there will be many opportunities for practice. Some obvious examples for sitting will be to wait for his meal to be served, to go outside, to have his leach attached, to cross the busy street in order to avoid cars or to simply wait for a treat.

The way to teach him the "sit" command is by saying his name to get his attention and then saying the command. Every command you teach should be preceded by his name to claim his attention so he knows you are talking to him and no one else. You want his full attention on yourself when giving him a command. You will find that puppies love to have a name mainly cause they love attention. Later when they are older, adolescence sort of affects there brain and they sometimes don't want to respond always. Reinforcing it now will help for your dog to respond better later in the future.

The simplest process of training him the "Sit" command will be to gather a response by holding a small treat just above his nose enough for him to have to look up. As he looks up, slowly move the treat back wards out of his reach and within eye view. With practice, he will properly follow it and eventually find himself in the sitting position. As he does move into the sitting position say the "Sit" command. Once he gets into the sitting position, then reward him with a very small treat while saying "good dog" in a higher pitched voice. Rewarding him with both praise and a treat will help reinforce his learning of this command.

Directly above we talked about the motivational approach where he finds his sitting position on his own. Another way requires your assistance to gently push his rump to the ground. Simply sit beside him in order to hold the treat above his nose as before while moving it back wards. At the same time, voice the same command while using your other hand to gently push his butt down to the ground. If he wants to push back up with this butt in obvious force, simply distract him in order to start all over.

Let's talk a little about rewarding him. Above we discussed using two ways about rewarding him at the same time. Those were giving him an edible treat along with giving him loving praise in a high-pitched voice. Eventually you'll want to not give him a treat every time you command him to do something. It will be good to give him praise, but you do not want him to expect to treat all the time. A tree will be very important when your dog is young like a puppy stage or adolescent stage. You'll need your dog's full attention, so using food at these stages of growth will help bring his full attention to you. Later you can slowly remove the usage of a food treat reward.

With this command well learned, you have a priceless tool to help control your dog in many situations. When possible, you will want to continue the learning in places with many different kinds of distractions. This will prepare your dog for many different kinds of scenarios where sitting will assist you to keep your dog under control.

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