Technique to Teach Your Puppy to Sit, Stay, and Wait. OK! There’s it in a nutshell.
The fastest ways to train your dog to sit, lie down, and stay are repetition, positive reinforcement, and positive praise. Please remember the age of your dog. All dogs are young at heart. Don’t expect your puppy to respond quickly to training treats if it is still a puppy.
Repetition is the key to success. Dogs learn best by repeating actions over again. To start, call your pup over to you and in a calm, reassuring voice “sit.” When the pup arrives at your feet, use the verbal cue “stay” or “stay down.” Do this over until your pup sits, stays down, or stops moving.
It is important to continue to reward the behavior you are trying to teach. The best way to do this is to use a combination of verbal cues, treats, and rewards. Each time the behavior is rewarded, the behavior becomes more likely to continue. This will gradually teach the pup to sit and stay down without constant praise.
Start out small. Your puppy will only need treats for about a week. During this time, use treats and a visual cue that will gradually increase in size until your puppy can eat treats without taking your hand off the leash. Your puppy may not always take to your hand immediately, but with consistent practice he will begin to understand that when he sits down he gets rewarded with treats. Be patient and give treats intermittently.
With continued practice your puppy will learn to rely on your cues for his sit or stay. Your leash should be loose enough to allow you to easily move around and see what is going on around you. When your puppy begins to stray away from you, immediately place your fingers in front of his nose so he learns to focus on your finger and not his nose. This technique to teach your puppy sit will also work if you choose to use your leg leads, since most puppies treats from their back legs.
If praise is not your preference, or you find that your puppy does not listen when you click, it is easy to switch to clicker training. A clicker is a small plastic box with a trigger on the side. Whenever your puppy approaches the trigger and stops, he receives a treat. If he moves closer to the trigger without stopping he receives no treat, but praises. Using clicker training is easier to accomplish because you do not have to deal with constantly praising a dog every time he listens to you, which may get annoying after a while.
It is important to remember that the process of training your puppy is not overly aggressive. In fact, it can be a lot of fun. It can teach your pup to respect your authority, and it can increase his self confidence as well. Your family members will enjoy being able to see you dog listen to them, and eventually follow your command when they are sitting outside the house.
The first thing you must do when teaching your pup to sit is take one step back from your puppy. When your puppy has reached a point where he can heel and sit on his own, take one step back from him and give him a verbal reward. Praise him for standing still, staying put, and even stepping forward when you lead him in front of the pen. When he completes this obedience exercise he will begin to understand that you mean business when you are in the presence of your dog.
After you have began the sitting-stay-fetch training exercise, you should now add some positive reinforcement tactics. If your dog has crossed the pen and is ready to heel, use a treats loaded with treats that contain a food that dogs love, like chicken liver. Puppies love treats, and they will immediately begin wanting to eat when given these treats. If your puppy does not heel when given the treats, you should take him over to the pen and lead him over there until he has heeled. In this case, you may want to start using a leash.
You may also want to start using the command “sit” as much as possible throughout your training sessions with your dog. This will gain your pup’s respect for you, as well as for your commands. It can be frustrating for dogs when you are training them. As dogs do not always understand their trainers at first, it can seem like all you are trying to do is punish them for bad behavior. However, by starting out with simple commands, such as sit and stay, your dog will learn that these commands are important and that you mean no harm when you use these commands.
If your puppy is old enough, you should start luring him into the pen with a toy he likes. Purchase a couple treats with a juicy meat inside of them, like chicken livers, and place them in a shallow bowl that you can stand them in. Then throw in a handful of your puppy’s favorite treat, and begin your training.