Are you attempting to teach your Boykin Spaniel to sit? The skill of sitting up is quite easily taught to compact dogs, however much bigger dogs are a different story. It is tough for them to maintain their balance.
Teach Your Boykin Spaniel to Sit: Foundation
Sitting up is one of the fundamental skills that you should teach to your Boykin Spaniel and provides the groundwork for a large number of other techniques. To train a Boykin Spaniel to sit up, put together some treats as a reward, and put the Boykin Spaniel on her backside in the corner, so she is unable to fall either backward or sideways and has very little or no room to lose balance.
Teach Your Boykin Spaniel to Sit: Familiarize Her With The Command
Protect her from pitching forward by maintaining one hand underneath her chin and using the other hand dangle her snack above your Boykin Spaniel’s nose. Keep saying clearly and intelligibly, “sit.” Do not make her sit for too long at one time, but repeat the instruction regularly and reward her frequently with lots of appreciation and treats.
Teach Your Boykin Spaniel to Sit: Help Her Maintain Balance
During her first lesson your Boykin Spaniel will need quite a bit of help from your hand to keep her from tumbling forward, but as she gets control of the muscles and understands what you want, she will count less on your hand to keep her in position. Gradually, you can give your Boykin Spaniel less support up until you’ll basically have to maintain one hand in position two or three inches from her neck or chin, to be in position to stop her falling forward; later you will be able to take away this hand entirely and just simply dangle the reward right over the level of her head.
Teach Your Boykin Spaniel To Sit: Remove the Aids Incrementally
With frequent practice your Boykin Spaniel will stay seated for a long time after you set her up. Next she should be set against your wall, so as to provide her a support for her back only. Soon after she has learned this and can hold her place easily, practice with her up against chair legs, pillows or other items that give her less and less assistance. At some point she will be trained to sustain her balance and sit without needing anything to lean on.
Teach Your Boykin Spaniel to Sit: Putting It All Together
Throughout all these lessons the words "sit up" will have been ingrained upon her mind through persistent repetition. Now comes the final lesson to teach your Boykin Spaniel to sit up whenever she hears the phrase. It's highly likely, if she has been properly taught, you will merely have to get her out in the room, reveal to her a reward, hold it up a reasonable distance from the ground, say "sit up or sit" and she'll obey. Then you give her the treat while still in position.
The only prerequisite for flawlessness is to rehearse with her several times a day until she can sit on command and without being shown a treat; give her the rewards only after she has complied with the order.
Teach Your Boykin Spaniel Other Tricks
You have now the fundamentals for teaching your Boykin Spaniel many other skills. She can now be taught how to beg by moving your hand up and down just in front of her paws, which she'll move in sync with yours. She also can be taught to salute by bringing one paw 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 clothes.
In teaching a Boykin Spaniel to submit to being dressed up, do not try to get her to wear too many clothes at the same time. Try her at first with just a hat. Once she gets familiar with that you can put on a jacket and incrementally introduce her to the other garments.
Appreciate "teaching your Boykin Spaniel the sit up trick" and most importantly have fun in the process!
Don't forget to check out these other articles about Boykin Spaniels
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