19. Sit

19. SIT

LEVEL ONE

The dog must Sit from standing position on one cue only (may be a voice OR a hand cue, but not both, and no extra body language from the handler). The handler may use the dog’s name to get her attention before starting.

DISCUSSION: Sit is the standard preventive incompatible behaviour – dog can't jump on you if he's sitting. Can't get on the couch if he's sitting on the floor. Can't leap on visitors if he's sitting away from them. A behaviour necessary to virtually every dogsport, and a useful default behaviour When in doubt, sister, Sit!

EASY BEGINNINGS: Kids love to teach this behaviour. It's a great one to lure. With a soft, nibble-able treat in your hand, put your hand right on the dog's nose. Give her a chance to take a little nibble of the treat, then slowly start moving it up and back. Be sure that her nose is coming UP – nose goes UP, butt goes DOWN. As soon as the butt hits the ground, click and treat.

Be careful with luring – lure with the treat maybe five times, then make the same gesture with your empty hand. If the dog follows your hand and sits, click and treat. If she doesn't, lure with the treat maybe twice more, and try it without again. You're trying to get rid of the treat in your hand as quickly as possible.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

SHE'S JUMPING UP TO GET THE TREAT INSTEAD OF PUTTING HER BUTT ON THE GROUND – That's because you're holding the treat too high. You WANT the dog to follow the treat, so if you hold the treat high over her head, she's going to jump to reach it. Put the treat right down where she can nibble it at her regular nose-height, then SLOWLY move it up and back. Note that the treat never leaves her nose as her nose follows it up and back..

SHE DOESN'T SIT WHEN I LURE HER BACK, SHE JUST BACKS UP – Hmmm, a very athletic dog! Try starting in a corner where she can't back up!

SHE ONLY CROUCHES HER BACK LEGS, THEN SHE GIVES UP AND STANDS UP AGAIN – OK, for this dog, luring isn't going to work by itself. You're going to have to shape the behaviour a bit. Click the crouch ten times, then wait for a TINY bit more crouch than she gave you before. She's standing back up, as you say, because she tried what you wanted and, getting nothing for her effort, she gave up. You need to tell her that she IS on the right track, you WILL reward her for bending her back legs. Once she's secure on that point, you can affort to wait for a slightly bigger effort from her without her quitting.

ADDING A CUE: The nice thing about luring a behaviour is that it automatically builds in a hand signal. After a couple of days' practise, a short sample of the same gesture which produced the Sit in the first place will tell her you want her to Sit.

If you want a voice cue for the Sit as well, try to separate it from the gesture. Click the Sit often enough that she begins offering it to you without waiting for your gesture. When she's offering it, you can tell her what it's called – almost as if you're saying "Oh, by the way, that thing you're doing there? That's called 'Sit'" Pair the word with her sitting a hundred times, then ask for the behaviour when she's not thinking of it. If she responds correctly, click and treat. If she doesn't, never mind, pair it another hundred times and then try again.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: Where can she Sit? Can she Sit on the floor? On a carpet? On a hard floor? On a stool? On a grooming table? On the floor of your car? On top of her crate? Under a table? Before you open the door to the yard? Before you give her her dinner? Before she gets petted?

LEVEL TWO

The dog Sits from Stand on one cue only. The handler may use the dog’s name to get her attention before a voice cue. This behaviour must be tested with no food or clicker on the handler or anywhere nearby.

DISCUSSION: One of the standard complaints about clicker training is that the dog won't do the behaviour if you don't show her the cookie first. This is a totally false impression UNLESS you don't stop luring. If you spend months telling her that when you have a treat in your hand, you'll lure her into a Sit and give her the treat, but if you don't have a treat in your hand, you'll be either yelling at her to Sit or pushing her into a Sit or not asking her to Sit at all, what do you suppose she's going to believe?

EASY BEGINNINGS: Go to your most common training location WITH your clicker and maybe 15 treats. Put 10 treats on a table 5' away from you. Put 10 treats on a table 10' away from you, and put the rest on a table in the next room. Keep your clicker. Work on Sit from scratch until she's offering it to you eagerly and you've used up your initial handful of treats. Without any break, ask her for a Sit. Click, and go FAST and HAPPILY to the closest table, get a treat and hand it to her. Make a pretty big deal of this. Go back to your training place, ask for another Sit, click and go back to the table to get a treat. Finish up the treats this way.

Now, seamlessly, go back to the training place and ask for another Sit. Click, and go to the 10' table. Continue until you've used those ten treats up, then work with the ones in the next room. Lots of work for you, running back and forth, but worth it to get the dog to trust that there WILL be a treat, even if she can't see one.

When you've run through that routine several days in a row, do the same thing again, but don't take your clicker into the game. Where you would have clicked, now you're going to use a word instead. I use YES!

CONTINUING EDUCATION: After each meal, I measure out the dog's next meal and put it in a bowl in the cupboard. That way I've always got food available to go to when I ask the puppy for a behaviour. Whatever's left in the bowl at mealtime is her meal. Sometimes I add some tiny bits of nuked, cutup hot dog, just to make life interesting.

Take this show all around the house. Explain that ANYWHERE in the house that you ask for a behaviour, you can back it up with a reward.

Put a plastic bag of treats in the glove compartment of your car. Put some in your mailbox or behind a bench at a bus stop, or hanging from a tree in the park. Here's another place you need to use imagination.

LEVEL THREE

The dog Sits from a Stand on one cue only from 10’ away. The dog may drift off the position where she was standing, but there must be a fairly immediate response to the cue. This behaviour must be done with no food or clicker in the ring or area.

DISCUSSION: More work on Distance. Having the dog respond to your cues when she's not right beside you is one of the true joys of training. Sit, Stand, and Down – these position cues are an excellent place to start working on this degree of responsiveness.

EASY BEGINNINGS: With the dog in front of you, click X10 for a Sit. You'll need the dog enthusiastic about the Sit before you continue, so if you're not getting an excellent response to the Sit cue, go back to a volunteer Sit and work back up to fast, eager, and correct behaviour when you ask for it.

Gradually start moving away from the dog as you ask for the Sit. Use the 300-Peck method as you did for the other distance behaviours – get a Sit response right in front of the dog, click and toss the treat far enough from her to get her to stand back up while getting it. Move half a step away, and ask for the Sit again, click and toss. Move another half-step away, and ask again. Keep moving away until the dog makes a mistake by not responding correctly to your Sit cue, then go right back up beside her and start again, one step at a time.

You'll probably need some way to keep her away from you as you step away. You could tie her leash to something, but it will be easier for her to give you the behaviour if she's blocked by something in front of her rather than being held back by a leash. Try a baby gate across a doorway, or an exercise pen.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

SHE WON'T RESPOND TO THE CUE AT A DISTANCE! Get your cue firmly installed with the dog right in front of you. The simple secret to getting the cue at a distance is to have her very good at responding to it when she's right in front of you, and then moving away a few inches at a time, rewarding each tiny increment. And when she makes her FIRST mistake, start right back at the beginning.

ADDING A CUE: You already have the Sit cue. Continue to use it the same way you did when she was near you – don't try to get compliance by making it louder or firmer, just use the cue as you taught it to her. If she doesn't respond to a cue, she's made a mistake. Go back to her, and start from there again.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: When she'll respond to your cue in one location, 10' away from you, move your location. Move it to another room, change direction, teach her to Sit when you give the cue behind her.

LEVEL FOUR

The dog Sits from Down with one cue only. This behaviour must be done with no food or clicker in the ring or area.

DISCUSSION: Sit from Down? Isn't that backwards? Not really. Sit from Down isn't any more difficult than Down from Sit, it just isn't how we normally think of the dog working.

EASY BEGINNINGS: First, give it a shot. You've done a lot of work on Sit so far, it's possible that if you say Sit, your dog might just Sit. End of discussion, congratulations!

But if it's NOT that simple, it's NEARLY that simple. Probably the easiest way to get a Sit from Down is to lure. Put the treat in the dog's nose and pull up and slightly back. As the nose goes up, the front end comes up with it. Click when her front legs get up high enough to call it a Sit.

After you lure X20, if she hasn't figured it out yet, you might also try leaning toward her or taking a small step into her personal space.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

SHE JUST WANTS TO STAY DOWN! Relax and play with it a bit. Let her nibble on the bait a bit, then very slowly raise it until it's just out of reach. If the elbows come off the floor at ALL, or even, in the beginning, if she stretches her neck to follow the treat, click and reward.

You could also do Sit from standing X20, then ask for the Down and THEN lure her into the sitting position while her body is still thinking about it.

Big dogs and big puppies frequently find lying down a lot more rewarding than sitting, so you might have better luck starting this when you're getting ready to feed her a meal, or at the time of day when she's most energetic.

ADDING A CUE: If you're planning on using a hand signal, you've already got it – your hand moving upwards over her head from in front of her nose.
If you want to use a voice cue, you can add it when she's readily getting into the Sit following the lure. Say Sit, THEN lure, click, treat. OR you can wait until she's popping up into a Sit every time you ask for a Down and tell her the name of what she's doing: Sit!

OH NO we've wrecked the DownStay! No we didn't, we just asked her not to think about it for a moment. Sitting up has become the default behaviour. When you've got this the way you want it, you can go back to your 300-Peck DownStays, get them right again, then work the Sit from Down until it's right again – keep bouncing back and forth until she understands the cues for each of them.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: The only thing left for you to do is to get the behaviour without having the treat in the room. When she's responding well to the voice cue, put the treats and clicker on a nearby table. Ask for the Sit, say Yes!, and reach for the treat on the table. Next, move further from the table and do it again. This is 300-Peck distance – when she fails to Sit, go back to the table and start moving away from it again. Pretty soon you'll be in another room.

LEVEL FIVE

The dog Sits from Down on a hand signal only. This is an optional behaviour.

DISCUSSION: The hand signal should be easier than a voice cue, as it incorporates the luring motion.

LEVEL SIX

The dog Sits from Down on a hand signal only at 10’. This is an optional behaviour.

DISCUSSION: Increasing the effective distance on the signal.

LEVEL SEVEN

The dog Sits from Down on signal in line. This is an optional behaviour.

DISCUSSION: This is part of the official obedience Signal exercise. By "in line" I mean with other signal cues you've taught her. The entire formal Signal exercise goes: Heel, Stand, Stay, Down, Sit, Come, Finish. You don't have to do the entire set here, but get in at least two signals before the Sit.