Are you aspiring to teach your Sarplaninac to sit? The talent of sitting up is effortlessly taught to smaller dogs, however bigger doggies are another story. It’s tricky for them to maintain their balance.
Teach Your Sarplaninac to Sit: Groundwork
Sitting is one of the first tricks that you should teach to a Sarplaninac and forms the foundation for many other skills. To train a Sarplaninac to sit up, prepare some treats as a reward, and place your Sarplaninac on her backside in a corner, to ensure she is unable to fall either backward or sideways and has very little or no space to lose balance.
Teach Your Sarplaninac to Sit: Acquaint Her With The Sound of The Words
Prevent her from pitching towards you by keeping your hand under her chin and using your second hand hold the reward above your Sarplaninac’s face. Keep saying clearly and deliberately, “sit.” Do not make her sit up for too long at any one time, but repeat the training routinely and reward her often with a lot of kudos and treats.
Teach Your Sarplaninac to Sit: Help Her Stay Balanced
In her beginner lesson your Sarplaninac will call for significant help from you to keep her from tumbling forward, but as she gains control of the stabilizing muscles and knows what you want her to do, she’ll count less and less on your hand to keep her steady. Then you can gradually give her less assistance till you will merely have to keep one hand in position two or three inches from her neck or chin, to be available to stop her from falling forward; in the future you can easily withdraw your hand and just suspend the treat just over the height of her head.
Teach Your Sarplaninac To Sit: Remove the Assistance Progressively
With constant training your Sarplaninac will stay seated well after you command her. The next step is she should be set against the wall, so as to give her a support for her back only. Only after she has soaked up this and can keep her posture easily, practice with her against chair legs, cushions or other items that provide her less and less help. Gradually she will grasp how to preserve her equilibrium and sit in the absence of something to rest on.
Teach Your Sarplaninac to Sit: Putting It All Together
During all these lessons the command "sit up" will have been ingrained upon her psyche through constant repetition. Lastly comes the final training to teach your Sarplaninac to sit up whenever she hears the command. It's highly likely, if she has been diligently instructed, you will just have to call her out in the room, show a snack, hold it up a reasonable distance from the floor, say "sit" and she'll do so. Then you'll give her the treat while still in position.
The only criteria for flawlessness is to train with your Sarplaninac multiple times daily until she will sit when told and without being shown a treat; give her the rewards only after she has followed the order.
Teach Your Sarplaninac Other Tricks
You have now the fundamentals for teaching your Sarplaninac many other skills. She now can be taught how to beg by waving your hand up and down in front of her paws, which she'll move in sync with yours. She also can be taught 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 hat on her head or wear other clothing.
While training a Sarplaninac to submit to being clothed, do not try to make her wear too many things at once. Try at first with just a hat. After she gets familiar with that you can put on a jacket and over time introduce her to more clothing.
Get a kick out of "teaching your Sarplaninac the sit up trick" and most importantly have fun while you're doing it!
Don't forget to check out these other articles about Sarplaninacs
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