Are you working to teach your Shikoku to sit? The technique of sitting up is quite easily taught to smaller dogs, though bigger pooches are another story. It is challenging for them to sustain their equilibrium.
Teach Your Shikoku to Sit: Anticipation
Sitting is one of the most basic tricks that you should teach to your Shikoku and forms the ground work for plenty of other tricks. In order to train a Shikoku to sit up, prepare some treats as a reward, and set the Shikoku on her butt in a corner, so that she won’t be able to fall either aft or sideways and has very little or no room to lose balance.
Teach Your Shikoku to Sit: Familiarize Her With The Phrase
Stop her from tilting towards you by keeping your hand beneath her chin and using your other hand hold the snack above her nose. Keep repeating clearly and intelligibly, “sit.” Don’t force her to sit for too long at any one time, however repeat the instruction frequently and reward her frequently with loads of kudos and snacks.
Teach Your Shikoku to Sit: Help Her Balance
In her beginner lesson your Shikoku will demand considerable help and support from you to prevent her from tumbling forward, but as she gets control of her muscles and understands what you want, she will depend less upon your hand to keep her in position. Then you can gradually give her less assistance til you will only have to maintain one hand in position 2 or 3 inches from her chin or neck, to be available to prevent her from falling forward; in the future you can easily take away this hand completely and just hold the reward right above the height of her face.
Teach Your Shikoku To Sit: Remove the Help Slowly And Gradually
With frequent training your Shikoku will sit up well after you command her. Then she should be set against the wall, so as to provide her a support for her back only. Soon after she has soaked up this and can keep her posture effortlessly, practice with her against chair legs, pillows or other objects that provide her less and less aid. Eventually she will be trained to sustain her stability and sit without having something to rest on.
Teach Your Shikoku to Sit: Putting It All Together
In the course of all these lessons the phrase "sit up" will have been impressed upon her psyche with the assistance of constant repetition. Now comes the final lesson to teach your Shikoku to sit up as quickly as she hears the command. It's highly likely, if she has been carefully trained, you will just have to summon her out into the room, reveal a treat, hold it up a reasonable distance from the floor, say "sit" and she will do so. Then you give her the treat while still in place.
The only prerequisite for flawlessness is to rehearse with her multiple times a day until she can sit when told and without being shown a reward; give her the treats only once she has followed the command.
Teach Your Shikoku Other Tricks
You have now the method for teaching your Shikoku many other tricks. She now can be taught 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 to the side of her head, or to keep something in her mouth, or to wear a hat on her head or wear other clothes.
In instructing a Shikoku to accept being dressed up, do not try to make her wear too many garments at one time. Try at first with a cap. Only after she gets familiar with that you could put on a coat and over time introduce her to more clothes.
Delight in "teaching your Shikoku the sit up trick" and most importantly have fun along the way!
Don't forget to check out these other articles about Shikokus
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