Are you working to teach your Billy to sit? The skill of sitting up is easily taught to smaller dogs, yet bigger pet dogs are a different story. It’s challenging for them to maintain their equilibrium.
Teach Your Billy to Sit: Readiness
Sitting up is one of the initial skills that should be taught to a Billy and is the groundwork for innumerable other tricks. In order to train a Billy to sit up, organize some snacks as a reward, and place the Billy on her butt in the corner, to ensure that she will not fall either backward or sideways and has very little or no space to lose balance.
Teach Your Billy to Sit: Familiarize Her With The Command
Stop her from tilting towards you by securing one hand beneath her chin and with your second hand hold the treat above the Billy’s face. Keep saying intelligibly and clearly, “sit up.” Don’t force her to sit for too long at any one time, but repeat the lesson frequently and reward her frequently with loads of recognition and snacks.
Teach Your Billy to Sit: Help Her Stay Balanced
In the very first lesson your Billy will need a lot of help and support from you to prevent her from tumbling forward, but as she gets better control of the stabilizing muscles and comprehends what you want, she’ll depend less upon your hand to keep her in position. Then you can gradually give your Billy less help til you will merely have to maintain one hand in position 2 or 3 inches from her neck or chin, to be in place to prevent her from falling forward; later on you will be able to withdraw your hand altogether and just simply hold the snack just over the height of her face.
Teach Your Billy To Sit: Remove the Assistance Gradually
With consistent training she will stay seated for a long time after you set her up. Then she should be set up against the wall, so as to offer her support for her back. Soon after she has gotten the knack of this and can keep her position effortlessly, rehearse with her up against chair legs, pillows or other items that give her less and less aid. In the end she will be able to maintain her stability and sit in the absence of anything to lean on.
Teach Your Billy to Sit: Putting It All Together
During the course of all this training the words "sit up" will have been impressed upon her psyche with the assistance of constant repetition. Now here's the final training to teach your Billy to sit up immediately after she hears the command. It's highly likely, if she has been diligently taught, you will just have to summon her out into the room, display a treat, hold it up a reasonable distance from the floor, say "sit up or sit" and she will obey. Then you'll give her the snack while still in position.
The only prerequisite for flawlessness is to practice with her multiple times daily until she will sit when told and without being shown a snack; give her the snacks only after she has adhered to the command.
Teach Your Billy Other Tricks
You have now the fundamentals for teaching your Billy many other skills. She can now be taught how to beg by waving your hand up and down just in front of her paws, which she will move in rhythm with yours. She also can learn to salute by moving one paw up to the side of her head, or to keep a wooden pipe in her mouth, or to wear a cap on her head or wear other articles of clothing.
In instructing a Billy to tolerate being dressed up, don't try to get her to wear too many clothes at the same time. Try her at first with just a hat. After she gets familiar with that you can put on a coat and incrementally introduce her to the other clothing.
Get a kick out of "teaching your Billy the sit up trick" and most importantly have fun while you're doing it!
Don't forget to check out these other articles about Billys
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