How to teach your dog to sit

There are five different ways you can teach your dog to sit. The hardest part is probably figuring out exactly what method your dog or puppy will respond to. You need to look at the dogs personality and ask yourself a few questions. Is your dog food driven? Does he always beg for snacks, does he race for his bowl, does he always seem hungry? If that is the case then the chances are your dog is food driven.

If you dog doesn’t seem to eat a lot, or isn’t interested in food or snacks from the table then does he respond to praise? Does he follow you around the house, try and sleep on your bed or climb onto your lap? Does he get upset if left alone? Then your dog is probably responding to praise and attention and wanting to bond with you.

The third possibility is that your dog has a very strong personality – he seems to want to be the leader of the pack and will enter through doors before you, and not be happy watching you eat dinner. He may want to play rough, or mouth you – this means he is pretending to bite you. This type of dog is probably fighting for dominance with you.

Now that you’ve figured out what type of dog you have – food driven, praise focussed, or dominant then pick the method that will suit your dog.

A food driven dog is likely to be easy to teach to sit. Simply grab a tasty bit of meat and stand right over your dog. Dangle the food in front of the dog but move it away every time he jumps for it, or goes onto his hind legs. Move the food back when the dog is standing only. Then move it over his head – so that he needs to look up to see the snack. Keep moving until the dog puts his backside on the ground in an attempt to keep the snack in sight. He’s now sitting. Excellent. Reward with the food immediately and then keep repeating this. Quickly the dog will learn to sit before the food is waved over his head. Then you can work on removing the snack all of the time – only give it sometimes. The dog will continue to sit in the hope of a snack.

If your dog is praise and attention focused then the method is similar – except that you reward the dog with pats and a toy or a game with you. You can try the same method but waving the toy over the dog’s head instead. These type of dogs also respond well to click training or hand training – where the click of a special sound signals the dog to sit, or the use of a hand signal, such as a palm face down, moving down. Lavish attention on the dog afterwards and his love for you will mean that he’ll continue to sit.

For a dominant dog your choice is either to force the dog’s backside to the ground and hold it there, while repeating the word “sit”, or to use a choker chain that you pull upwards, forcing the dog to sit. This is quite dangerous because you may be training a dominant dog to be aggressive towards humans – and that is never a good thing. Instead try to see if your dog will respond to food, human company or games.

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