Are you making an attempt to teach your Portuguese Water Dog to sit? The talent of sitting up is effortlessly taught to pocket-sized dogs, though much bigger pooches are a different story. It’s difficult for them to maintain their equilibrium.
Teach Your Portuguese Water Dog to Sit: Preparation
Sitting up is one of the first skills that you should teach to your Portuguese Water Dog and is the ground work for myriad other techniques. To train a Portuguese Water Dog to sit up, prepare some snacks as a perk, and set the Portuguese Water Dog on her haunches in a corner, to ensure she is unable to fall either aft or sideways and has very little or no room to lose balance.
Teach Your Portuguese Water Dog to Sit: Familiarize Her With The Phrase
Protect her from pitching to the front by securing 1 hand underneath her chin and with your second hand hold the reward above her nose. Keep saying distinctly and deliberately, “sit up.” Don’t make her sit up for too long at any one time, however repeat the instruction regularly and reward her regularly with a lot of praise and snacks.
Teach Your Portuguese Water Dog to Sit: Help Her Maintain Balance
Throughout her beginner lesson she will call for significant assistance from you to prevent her from pitching forward, but as she gains better control of her muscles and grasps what you want her to do, she’ll rely less upon your hand to hold her in position. Then you can gradually give your Portuguese Water Dog less support til you’ll simply have to keep one hand in position two or three inches from her chin or neck, to be in place to stop her from falling forward; eventually you will be able to take away this hand completely and simply dangle the treat right over the height of your Portuguese Water Dog’s face.
Teach Your Portuguese Water Dog To Sit: Remove the Help Progressively
After consistent practice your Portuguese Water Dog will stay seated long after you command her. Next she should be set up against the wall, so as to give her a support for her back. Only after she has soaked up this and can hold her place easily, rehearse with her up against chair legs, pillows or other objects that give her less and less help. Ultimately she will learn to sustain her equilibrium and sit without anything to lean on.
Teach Your Portuguese Water Dog to Sit: Putting It All Together
During the course of all this training the phrase "sit up" will have been instilled upon her mind through persistent repetition. Now comes the final lesson to teach your Portuguese Water Dog to sit up immediately after she hears the words. Most likely, if she has been carefully taught, you will just have to call her out in the room, show to her a snack, hold it up a reasonable distance from the ground, say "sit up" and she will do so. Then just give her the treat while still in position.
The only requirement for perfection is to train with her several times daily until she can sit on command and without being shown a treat; give her the treats only after she has followed the order.
Teach Your Portuguese Water Dog Other Tricks
You have now the method for teaching your Portuguese Water Dog many other skills. She can now learn how to beg by moving your hand up and down in front of her paws, which she'll move in conjunction with yours. She also can learn to salute by moving one paw up to the side of her head, or to hold a wooden pipe in her mouth, or to wear a cap on her head or wear other clothes.
In training a Portuguese Water Dog to accept being dressed up, don't try to get her to wear too many clothes at one time. Try her at first with just a hat. After she becomes familiar with that you can put on a coat and incrementally introduce her to the other clothes.
Enjoy "teaching your Portuguese Water Dog the sit up trick" and most importantly have fun in the process!
Don't forget to check out these other articles about Portuguese Water Dogs
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