Are you aiming to teach your Australian Shepherd to sit? The talent of sitting up is easily taught to little dogs, but larger doggies are another story. It’s problematic for them to keep their equilibrium.
Teach Your Australian Shepherd to Sit: Groundwork
Sitting is one of the fundamental skills that should be taught to your Australian Shepherd and lays the ground work for numerous other skills. To train a Australian Shepherd to sit up, put together some snacks as a perk, and put the Australian Shepherd on her backside in the corner, to make sure that she can not fall either aft or sideways and has very little or no room to stumble.
Teach Your Australian Shepherd to Sit: Acquaint Her With The Command
Protect her from pitching towards you by sticking 1 hand underneath her chin and using the other hand hold the reward above her nose. Keep saying intelligibly and distinctly, “sit up.” Do not force her to sit up for too long at one time, but repeat the instruction frequently and reward her often with lots of recognition and snacks.
Teach Your Australian Shepherd to Sit: Help Her Stay Balanced
Throughout the beginner lesson she will demand a lot of support from you to stop her from falling forward, but as she gets more control of her stabilizing muscles and knows what you want, she’ll rely less upon your hand to hold her steady. Gradually, you can give your Australian Shepherd less help and support till you will simply have to keep one hand in position 2 or 3 inches from her chin or neck, to be ready to prevent her from falling forward; in the future you can easily withdraw this hand and simply hold the snack right over the level of your Australian Shepherd’s head.
Teach Your Australian Shepherd To Sit: Remove the Help Incrementally
With constant practice she will stay seated well after you set her up. Afterward she should be set up against a wall, so as to give her assistance for her back only. Immediately after she has gotten the hang of this and can hold her place effortlessly, practice with her up against chair legs, pillows or other items that give her less and less aid. Eventually she will grasp how to maintain her stability and sit up without having anything to lean on.
Teach Your Australian Shepherd to Sit: Putting It All Together
During the course of all this training the command "sit up" will have been impressed upon her subconscious through constant repetition. Lastly here's the final lesson to teach your Australian Shepherd to sit up immediately after she hears the words. It's highly likely, if she has been diligently taught, you will just have to call her out in the room, reveal to her a reward, hold it up a reasonable distance from the ground, say "sit up or sit" and she'll do so. Then just give her the reward while still in position.
The only necessity for perfection is to practice with her multiple times a day until she sits when commanded to and without being shown a reward; give her the rewards only once she has followed the order.
Teach Your Australian Shepherd Other Tricks
You have now the fundamentals for teaching your Australian Shepherd many other tricks. She now can be taught how to beg by moving your hand up and down just in front of her paws, which she will move in sync with yours. She also can learn to salute by moving one paw up to the side of her head, or to keep something in her mouth, or to wear a hat on her head or wear other articles of clothing.
While training a Australian Shepherd to tolerate being dressed up, do not try to get her to wear too many garments simultaneously. Try at first with just a hat. After she becomes used to that you could put on a jacket and over time introduce her to more clothing.
Get a kick out of "teaching your Australian Shepherd the sit up trick" and most importantly have fun in the process!
Don't forget to check out these other articles about Australian Shepherds
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