Teach Your Dog to Sit, Lie Down, & Stand

"Hi this is Elise for ExpertVillage.com and in this short video clip we’re going to be talking about how to teach you dog to sit-down-stand. If you would like to see more about my services then you can visit my website at www.canineheadstart.com. We’re going to be working with Ursa today, she’s a 3 year old female Briard and we’re going to be teaching her sit-down-stand. I use hand signals when I’m working with a dog, one of the reasons is dogs are visual communicators more than verbal communicators and it always aids a dog like Ursa, who hasn’t done a whole lot of work to understand what we want. In a lot of dogs, you can then transfer to giving only hand signals or only giving verbal cues to your dog. You’re going to go and lie down without me even asking you to huh? Good girl. So to start, we’re going to give the command, Ursa – Sit. We’re going to mark the behavior, reward the behavior and we’re not going to release the behavior because I’m not going to put her into a down. Ursa – Down. I’m going to reward the down behavior and then I’m going to ask her to go back and do a sit. Good girl. And from a sit I’m going to ask her to Ursa – Stand. Good girl. Okay and now I’m going to release the behavior. So you can see she was not completely sure of herself when I was asking her to go into a stand from a sit. Now what I did rather than repeating the verbal cue was I encouraged her by giving her my lure hand. Also notice that I didn’t have any treats in my hand at all. That’s very important because you don’t want to be bribing your dog. In another video clip we will be talking about the difference between a lure, a reward and a bribe. Let’s see if Ursa can get the sit to a stand again. Ursa – Sit. Good girl. Now I’m going to ask her again for a stand, good girl. Good job, she got it."