How to Teach Your Labrador to Sit

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village, and today we’re going to talk about training dogs. So let’s teach a Labrador retriever how to sit. This yellow Lab knows I have treats. So I might or might not use food as a lure with this particular dog, I do have to use a relatively low-value treat; of course keep in mind that Labrador retrievers are walking stomachs. So you can pretty much train them with anything. I trained my Labs with little ends of asparagus and the ends of carrots. Good girl, good girl. I’m going to let her know I have the food, lead her nose up into the air, sit, good… and as soon as her bottom hits the ground I say the word, and then as soon as her bottom hits the ground I mark it, and then I make the treats random. Now I’m also going to try serendipity here. I’m waiting to see if she’ll offer to sit; well she would not she needs a little more help, Telula good and I’m going to use a little body language, that’s not working I’ll go to a hand signal, sit, good, good girl. There are many different ways you can teach dogs how to do things. If a method isn’t working for you in this video then check out a different breed. You might get some tips there. Now she is really not paying attention to me, so this is a great opportunity for me to use food as a lure to get her to pay attention. Remember we want to set our dogs up to succeed by not giving them commands when we don’t think they’re going to pay attention. Lula, good, sit. She needs a little help, good, okay, sit, good. She’s responding very well to the hand signal, so let’s stick with that for a while, remember we want to fade it later and get her to respond to verbal commands. Sit, good, very nice. I’ll do this one more time, sit, good and not give her the treat, oh, oh sometimes Labs don’t swallow their treats, good girl, Sit, good, so we’ve ended with the success teaching a Labrador retriever how to sit. "