How To Teach a Dog To Sit

Find Some Space and Patience

• When training your dog, it’s essential to pick an area that encourages your dog to move about and reset the behavior.
  • Someplace comfortable, such as your living room or kitchen, will put them in the optimal mental headspace for learning.

• Come prepared to be patient.
  • You don’t learn things overnight and neither will your dog, no matter how smart your dog is!

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Attract Your Dog’s Attention

• Hold a small, tasty dog treat to you dog’s nose.
  • Pick something your dog can smell in your hand, such as a little bit of cheese or fresh meat.

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Get Your Dog to Sit

• As your dog sniffs for the treat, slowly move your hand back and over the dog’s head in an arc.
  • As your dog’s head goes back to look at the treat, their rear end will lower to the ground.
  • Note that over time, this arcing hand motion over your dog’s head will become their visual cue to sit.

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Mark the Desired Behavior

• As soon as your dog’s bottom touches the floor, use the clicker and/or verbal marker (i.e. say “good.”)
• At the same time, reward your dog with the yummy treat in your hand.

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Reset and Repeat

• Place a fresh treat slightly in front of your dog to encourage them to stand up again.
• Repeat Steps 2 through 4.
• Continue for a minimum of three minutes, but no longer than five minutes.

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Practice

• Repeat practice sessions three times each day for sessions of three to five minutes.
  • This practice should always be in a similar environments to start with (e.g. quiet family room).
• Once your dog is sitting eight out of 10 times using the visual cue — your arcing hand motion over your dog’s head — you can progress to the next step (adding a verbal cue).
  • Expect this to take three or four training sessions, over a couple of days.

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Add a Verbal Cue

• Say “sit,” pause, then add your visual cue (the arcing hand motion).
  • Don’t make this dog training mistake: Always add any new cue BEFORE using the old one, not the other way around.
• Click or mark at the same moment as before — just as your dog’s rear end touches the floor.
• Repeat as before — in three to five-minute training sessions, three times a day — until your dog begins to preempt your hand motion, sitting simply on the verbal cue.
  • Verbal cues can take anywhere from one to 10 training sessions for a dog to learn.
• Have a little party with your dog to celebrate learning their new trick!

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Set Your “Sit”

• Practice your dog’s “sit” in different settings to make the trick stick. (What your dog can perform flawlessly in the kitchen they may struggle to understand at the dog park.)

  • As with teaching any new dog behavior, take it back to basics and slowly work up the end result.
  • If your dog struggles, go back to the environment where they learned the trick so they can perform it successfully again.
  • Keep at it until your dog can easily sit in many different environments. It will likely take up to two weeks.

• Reduce the number of treats.
  • Once your dog has proofed the behavior in different environments, you can start to reduce the number of treats you give as a reward. Start by rewarding every other sit and progress to rewarding with their favorite dog toy.

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