Are you struggling to teach your Longhaired Whippet to sit? The technique of sitting up is quite easily taught to small dogs, but much bigger pooches are another story. It’s difficult for them to sustain their equilibrium.
Teach Your Longhaired Whippet to Sit: Planning
Sitting is one of the 1st techniques that should be taught to your Longhaired Whippet and is the foundation for innumerable other skills. In order to train a Longhaired Whippet to sit up, put together some snacks as a reward, and place your Longhaired Whippet on her backside in the corner, to make sure that she is unable to fall either backward or sideways and has very little or no room to stumble.
Teach Your Longhaired Whippet to Sit: Familiarize Her With The Words
Prevent her from tilting to the front by maintaining one hand on her chin and using the other hand hold the treat above the Longhaired Whippet’s nose. Keep repeating clearly and intelligibly, “sit.” Don’t force her to sit up for too long at any one time, but do repeat the training regularly and reward her regularly with a lot of appreciation and snacks.
Teach Your Longhaired Whippet to Sit: Help Her Balance
In the initial lesson she will demand quite a bit of help from you to stop her from falling forward, but as she gains more control of the balancing muscles and knows what you want, she will rely less upon your hand to keep her in position. Gradually, you can give your Longhaired Whippet less assistance up until you’ll just have to leave one hand in position 2 or 3 inches from her neck or chin, to be waiting to stop her from falling forward; later on you can easily withdraw the hand and simply dangle the treat just over the level of her head.
Teach Your Longhaired Whippet To Sit: Remove the Aids Incrementally
With regular training your Longhaired Whippet will stay seated long after you get her to sit. Next she should be set against a wall, so as to offer her a support for her back only. Immediately after she has grasped this and can keep her position effortlessly, rehearse with her against chair legs, pillows or other items that give her less and less help and support. At some point she will master how to preserve her equilibrium and sit without needing something to lean on.
Teach Your Longhaired Whippet to Sit: Putting It All Together
During all this training the phrase "sit up" will have been impressed upon her psyche through constant repetition. Lastly here's the final training to teach your Longhaired Whippet to sit up immediately after she hears the command. Most likely, if she has been carefully instructed, you will merely have to summon her out into the room, reveal to her a snack, hold it up a suitable distance from the ground, say "sit" and she will obey. Then you'll give her the snack while still in position.
The only necessity for perfection is to train with your Longhaired Whippet multiple times a day until she will sit on command and without being shown a snack; give her the rewards only after she has followed the command.
Teach Your Longhaired Whippet Other Tricks
You have now the groundwork for teaching your Longhaired Whippet many other skills. She can now learn to beg by waving your hand up and down in front of her paws, which she'll move in coordination with yours. She can also be taught to salute by moving one paw to the side of her head, or to keep something in her mouth, or to wear a cap on her head or wear other articles of clothing.
When instructing a Longhaired Whippet to submit to being dressed up, do not try to get her to wear too many items at once. Try at first with a cap. Once she gets adjusted to that you can put on a jacket and incrementally introduce her to more clothes.
Get a kick out of "teaching your Longhaired Whippet the sit up trick" and most importantly have fun in the process!
Don't forget to check out these other articles about Longhaired Whippets
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