Training a Dog to Sit on Command

Series Summary

Training your dog to obey basic commands is part of responsible ownership. Dogs do not learn these traits on their own, but if taught, will retain the knowledge willingly. There are many methods to training your dog that basically have the same strategies of positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. When the dog obeys the command, it gets an award or treat, thus reinforcing the obedience of the command. By praising positive behavior and correcting or ignoring negative behavior, you are able to show your pet what is acceptable without using fear. This helps create a loving relationship between you and your dog.

In this series you’ll learn tips and techniques for teaching a dog to do tricks. Expert dog trainer and behavior consultant Tracy Tenner offers advice on training your dog to sit, roll over, crawl, beg, wait, shake hands, play dead and more using positive reinforcement, dog treats and praise. She even demonstrates how to teach a dog to speak. They say it can’t be done, but after watching these free videos you’ll feel confident that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Tracy Tenner with Better Behavior Dog Training here at Extra Care Animal Hospital in Davie, Florida. We’re here on behalf of expertvillage.com and we’re going to be teaching you how to teach your dogs tricks. The first trick that we’re going to talk about today is not really a trick but it’s a command and we call it “sit”. The thing to understand is that basically all tricks are also commands as far as a dog’s concern it’s just teaching them one more thing as far as we’re concerned it makes us laugh and smile and so it’s fun. In teaching the sit or any other trick with treats we want to use something small and soft that we can break into very small pieces that your dog will like very, very much. The reason we want it to be soft and small is so that your dog can swallow it quickly and that way he remembers what he got it for in the first place. When we use treats for training we want the treat to be where your dog’s nose should be when he or she does the right thing. So this is Doc and we’re going to show him how to sit, the way to do would be to put the treat at his nose and move it up towards between his ears and say sit and as we push up and back as his rear end falls down we say, “good sit” and we let him have his treat. So we’ll show you that one more time, we have our little treat here, we put it up towards the ears, sit and as the dog’s rear end falls down into a sitting position we drop the treat into his mouth and we say, “good sit”. One last time we’ll show you the sit command or the trick called “sit”. Sit…treat, good, sit, noticed that I’ve not repeated the word sit I only said it one time and I’ve enforced the command and that will keep the dog doing it the first time we ask him or her to do it. And that’s sit, well we hope that you’ve learned a lot about teaching your dogs tricks today and if you would like further information you can contact us at www.extracareanimalhospital.vetsuite.com, thank you very much."