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OVERVIEW

PHASE 1: TEACH THE BEHAVIOR

Before we can ask our dogs to respond to the word “sit”, we first need to teach them what behavior we want. We can do this by having them follow a treat into the desired position, which is a process called “luring.” Without saying “sit” (that part will come later), place a treat on your dog’s nose and lift the treat up and back over their head. This will naturally encourage your dog to move into a seated position. Once they sit, click and treat!

While this process sounds simple, it can be a bit tricky. Here are some things to keep in mind:

Keep your hand in contact with your puppy’s nose while moving slowly and deliberately. If your hand moves too quickly or is positioned too high, your dog is much more likely to jump and nip at your hand or become overly excited.

Often the reason people move quickly or don’t want to keep their hand in contact with their puppy’s mouth is because they are afraid of their dog nipping them. I find this to be particularly true when working with puppies as their tiny teeth feel like needles! If your puppy is mouthy during this process, hold the treat with your fingertips pressed together and oriented upward. Keep your fingertips tilted slightly away from your dog. This will help protect the most sensitive part of your hand from your puppy’s teeth.

PHASE 2: SOLIDIFY THE HAND CUE

After a few successful sessions of your dog readily responding to the hand cue, it is time to start putting some distance between the treat and your dog’s nose. Use the same motion you have been using to cue the sit, but now hold your a hand a bit higher so it is a few inches above your dog’s nose. Eventually you will be able to cue the behavior while you are standing fully upright. This should happen gradually over a few sessions. 

Once your hand is safely out of nipping range, you can also relax your hand position so that your hand is more open. This general motion of palm facing up, moving upward will become your hand cue for sit. 

When you are consistently able to cue the sit while you are standing upright, it is time to teach your dog to respond to the hand cue without a treat in your hand. Begin your training session with cuing your dog to sit with a treat in your hand as you have previously and reward as usual. Do this 5 times in a row so that your dog is anticipating that you are working on the sit behavior. 

Now do the “sit” hand cue but without a treat in your hand. Once your dog sits, click and treat. It is crucial that your dog still gets a treat after completing the behavior. If you go directly from your dog seeing a treat and getting a treat to then not see a treat and not getting a treat, they will quickly learn not to respond if you don’t have food. If you have ever heard someone say that their dog only responds if they have a treat it is probably because they either didn’t do this step or they moved too quickly through this step.

PHASE 3: TEACH THE VERBAL CUE

Once you have a well established hand cue, you can move on to teaching the verbal cue. Say “sit," then immediately give the hand cue. When your puppy sits, click and treat.

Continue this pattern of saying the verbal cue (“sit”) followed by the hand cue for several sessions. In time, when your dog hears the word “sit” they will anticipate that the hand cue is coming and will start to sit before seeing the hand cue. This anticipation is how your dog will learn to respond to the verbal cue. Once your dog starts to respond to just the verbal cue, it will still take time for them to become consistently responsive to just the verbal cue. Anytime your dog sits for just the verbal cue, click and treat.

If you verbally cue your puppy to sit, but they don’t respond appropriately, follow up with the hand cue. People have a strong tendency to repeat their verbal cues, but your dog will be most responsive if you give the verbal cue one time and then follow up with the hand cue when needed.

If you feel like your dog has been really good with responding to the verbal cue, “sit” but then doesn’t respond, you can choose to just use praise or pets instead of using a click and treat. This brings us to our next phase…

PHASE 4: SELECTIVE REINFORCEMENT

Once your dog is consistently responding to both the verbal cue and the hand signal, you can start to pick and choose what responses you want to reward. I suggest rewarding the best responses and choosing not to reward the responses that are slow or otherwise not ideal. This will help to sharpen the response to the cue.