Teach Your Dog To Sit The Easy Way
When I trained my first puppy, the first thing I taught her was the word No! Each time she stopped doing something when I said No she was praised and rewarded. One day she was going to grab a hanging tassel in the neighbors house. I said No, and she came running across the room and bounced up into my lap to be praised.
Another command is Free! That means that your puppy is free to do whatever he likes, and you can get the message across at first by dancing about when you give the command.
Now teach your dog to lie. The usual command is down, but I use Lie! A dog can get hopelessly confused when someone says SitDown! Which is he to do?
Hold a scrap of dried liver in your right fist and lower it to the ground in front of your puppy as you say Lie! If he does it, he gets the food. That’s fine as far as it goes. He can perform quite impressively during heel work when you drop him. But the useful thing is when he stays down.
I like reading. So I put a lead on my puppy, tell him to Lie, and Stay, then slip the lead under my foot with the end in my hand, and start reading my book. Each time the puppy tries to get up I jerk the lead saying No! Stay! Lie!
This is one training session that doesn’t have to end with the attention span of your puppy. It will go to sleep. When it wakes up you remind it Stay! After a couple of hours reading your book your puppy should know the meaning of the word Stay.
I taught my afghan hound Stand!Stay! by standing him on a polished coffee table to be groomed. If he tried to move he would slip on the polished surface.
One day I heard him yelping and followed the sound. His long hair was caught in a thorn bush. I called out Stand!Stay! and he stopped struggling immediately. I finished climbing up the hill and used a penknife to cut him free. It took about twenty minutes and he didn’t move during that time.
Train your dog to slip in front of you and Lie!Stay! whenever you open the front door. If the visitor is welcome you call the dog to heel. Otherwise he is between you and the intruder, and if the intruder doesn’t flee you give the command Free!
