Are you aiming to teach your Neapolitan Mastiff to sit? The technique of sitting up is effortlessly taught to petite dogs, but larger pooches are a different story. It’s tricky for them to maintain their balance.
Teach Your Neapolitan Mastiff to Sit: Groundwork
Sitting is one of the initial techniques that should be taught to a Neapolitan Mastiff and is the groundwork for myriad other techniques. In order to train a Neapolitan Mastiff to sit up, organize some treats as a reward, and put your Neapolitan Mastiff on her butt in a corner, so she is not able to fall either backward or sideways and has very little or no room to stumble.
Teach Your Neapolitan Mastiff to Sit: Acquaint Her With The Words
Protect her from tilting towards you by keeping your hand beneath her chin and using your other hand hold her reward above the Neapolitan Mastiff’s nose. Keep repeating deliberately and distinctly, “sit.” Do not force her to sit too long at any one time, but do repeat the instruction routinely and reward her frequently with plenty of cheers and snacks.
Teach Your Neapolitan Mastiff to Sit: Help Her Balance
In the first lesson your Neapolitan Mastiff will demand a lot of support from you to stop her from pitching forward, but as she gains better control of the stabilizing muscles and grasps what you want her to do, she will count less upon your hand to keep her in position. Then you can gradually give your Neapolitan Mastiff less support till you’ll only have to maintain one hand in position 2 or 3 inches from her neck or chin, to be prepared to prevent her falling forward; later on you can most likely take away your hand completely and just simply suspend the snack right above the level of her head.
Teach Your Neapolitan Mastiff To Sit: Remove the Help Gradually Over Time
With frequent practice your Neapolitan Mastiff will sit up for a long time after you get her to sit. Afterward she should be set against a wall, so as to give her support for her back. Immediately after she has grasped this and can hold her place easily, rehearse with her using chair legs, cushions or other things that provide her less and less assistance. Subsequently she will learn how to keep her equilibrium and sit up without something to rest against.
Teach Your Neapolitan Mastiff to Sit: Putting It All Together
During the course of all these lessons the command "sit up" will have been ingrained upon her mind through frequent repetition. Last is the final training to teach your Neapolitan Mastiff to sit up right after she hears the command. There's a good chance, if she has been carefully trained, you will merely have to get her out in the room, reveal to her a treat, hold it up a suitable distance from the ground, say "sit up" and she'll obey. Then you'll give her the reward while still in place.
The only necessity for perfection is to practice with her multiple times daily until she will sit on command and without being shown a snack; give her the rewards only once she has adhered to the order.
Teach Your Neapolitan Mastiff Other Tricks
You have now the fundamentals for teaching your Neapolitan Mastiff many other tricks. She can now learn to beg by waving your hand up and down in front of her paws, which she will move in coordination with yours. She can also be taught to salute by moving one paw up to the side of her head, or to hold an object in her mouth, or to wear a hat on her head or wear other articles of clothing.
When training a Neapolitan Mastiff to accept being dressed up, do not try to make her wear too many things at the same time. Try at first with a hat. Once she gets familiar with that you can put on a jacket and eventually introduce her to more garments.
Delight in "teaching your Neapolitan Mastiff the sit up trick" and most importantly have fun along the way!
Don't forget to check out these other articles about Neapolitan Mastiffs
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