Are you trying to teach your Rat Terrier to sit? The technique of sitting up is quite easily taught to pocket-sized dogs, yet larger doggies are a different story. It’s difficult for them to keep their balance.
Teach Your Rat Terrier to Sit: Prep work
Sitting up is one of the first tricks that you should teach to your Rat Terrier and provides the ground work for a lot of other skills. To train a Rat Terrier to sit up, put together some snacks as a reward, and place the Rat Terrier on her rump in a corner, so she is unable to fall either aft or sideways and has very little or no room to stumble.
Teach Your Rat Terrier to Sit: Acquaint Her With The Words
Prevent her from pitching towards you by securing 1 hand on her chin and with your other hand dangle the treat above the Rat Terrier’s nose. Keep repeating intelligibly and clearly, “sit up.” Don’t make her sit up for too long at one time, but repeat the instruction frequently and reward her regularly with a lot of praise and treats.
Teach Your Rat Terrier to Sit: Help Her Maintain Balance
Throughout the very first lesson she will call for considerable help and support from your hand to stop her from pitching forward, but as she gains better control of her balancing muscles and grasps what you want her to do, she’ll rely less and less upon your hand to hold her steady. Then you can gradually give her less help and support til you will merely have to leave one hand in position 2 or 3 inches from her chin or neck, to be prepared to stop her from falling forward; in the future you might withdraw the hand completely and merely dangle the snack just above the height of her head.
Teach Your Rat Terrier To Sit: Remove the Help Progressively
After constant practice she will sit up for a good while after you make her. Then she should be set against your wall, so as to give her help for her back only. Soon after she has soaked up this and can keep her posture easily, rehearse with her against chair legs, cushions or other objects that offer her less and less assistance. Subsequently she will grasp how to preserve her stability and sit up without anything to lean against.
Teach Your Rat Terrier to Sit: Putting It All Together
During all these lessons the words "sit up" will have been impressed upon her subconscious through persistent repetition. Now is the final lesson to teach your Rat Terrier to sit up right after she hears the words. There's a great chance, if she has been diligently trained, you will simply have to get her out in the room, display to her a reward, hold it up a suitable distance from the ground, say "sit up" and she will do so. Then you'll give her the snack while still in position.
The only necessity for flawlessness is to rehearse with her multiple times daily until she will sit up on command and without being shown a snack; give her the rewards only after she has complied with the command.
Teach Your Rat Terrier Other Tricks
You have now the technique for teaching your Rat Terrier many other skills. She now can learn how to beg by waving your hand up and down just in front of her paws, which she'll move in conjunction with yours. She also can learn to salute by moving one paw to the side of her head, or to keep an object in her mouth, or to wear a hat on her head or wear other articles of clothing.
While training a Rat Terrier to accept being clothed, don't try to make her wear too many garments at one time. Try at first with just a hat. Once she gets familiar with that you could put on a coat and steadily introduce her to the other garments.
Get a kick out of "teaching your Rat Terrier the sit up trick" and most importantly have fun in the process!
Don't forget to check out these other articles about Rat Terriers
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