Teaching Your Dog to Sit

Teaching your dog to sit is one of the most basic, important, and fortunately easy, things you can do.  Even a relatively young puppy can learn this trick after a few sessions, and a quick learner can learn to sit after only a few minutes.  Also, learning to sit is one of the most important, basic dog training tools you can use and you will use it in many of your other dog and puppy  tricks and training methods.

The first step in teaching your dog to sit involves finding a quiet location.  Make sure the dog is not ready to eat or needing to go to the bathroom.  Ideally you will have all of your dog's attention.

Using a small treat is appropriate here, but you can also use a clicker or some other form of positive reinforcement.  You want to remain consistent with your overall approach to dog training here.

If you choose to use a treat, you can hold it over your dog's nose and slowly move it above his head.  As your dog's eyes and nose follow the treat he will likely sit down by himself at this point.  You can even give a gentle push on his backside to give him the idea.  At this point you are not even giving commands, your just starting the basic motions.

After your dog is sitting, give him some praise and the treat.  Repeat this a few times until your dog get the idea of what to do quickly.

After your dog sits a few times with the above method, add a firm command, "Sit" to the process.  Say "sit" and then repeat the above steps, followed by praise and a treat.  Return this a few times until you're simply saying "Sit" and your dog promptly does just that.

You eventually want to phase out the treat and simply rely on the sit command, although it is a good idea that in the future, when you plan on giving your dog a little snack or treat to use the sit comman to reinforce the process.

You'll want to keep the first session relatively short, but give it another try in a few hours.  You will also want to try different parts of the house as well as outside.   

When your dog can sit in any situation, inside or out, with other dogs or people around, you'll know that you have now successfully trained your dog or puppy to sit.