Are you making an attempt to teach your Bullmastiff to sit? The skill of sitting up is quite easily taught to very small dogs, yet much larger doggies are a different story. It’s tough for them to sustain their equilibrium.
Teach Your Bullmastiff to Sit: Readiness
Sitting is one of the very first tricks that should be taught to your Bullmastiff and is the groundwork for innumerable other tricks. To train a Bullmastiff to sit up, prepare some treats as a reward, and place the Bullmastiff on her backside in a corner, to make sure that she won’t fall either backward or sideways and has very little or no room to lose balance.
Teach Your Bullmastiff to Sit: Familiarize Her With The Phrase
Stop her from pitching to the front by maintaining your hand on her chin and using the other hand dangle her snack above the Bullmastiff’s face. Keep saying clearly and deliberately, “sit up.” Do not force her to sit up for too long at one time, but do repeat the lesson often and reward her regularly with loads of kudos and treats.
Teach Your Bullmastiff to Sit: Help Her Keep Her Balance
In her first lesson your Bullmastiff will demand quite a bit of assistance from you to keep her from tumbling forward, but as she gets control of her stabilizing muscles and finds out what you want her to do, she’ll rely less and less upon your hand to keep her steady. Then you can gradually give her less support til you’ll just have to keep one hand in position two or three inches from her neck or chin, to be in position to stop her from falling forward; later you will be able to withdraw the hand altogether and just simply hold the treat right above the height of her face.
Teach Your Bullmastiff To Sit: Remove the Assistance Slowly And Gradually
After consistent training your Bullmastiff will stay seated for a good while after you make her. Then she should be set up against your wall, so as to offer her assistance for her back only. Soon after she has gotten the hang of this and can keep her posture easily, practice with her using chair legs, pillows or other things that give her less and less help. In time she will understand how to maintain her equilibrium and sit without relying on anything to rest against.
Teach Your Bullmastiff to Sit: Putting It All Together
During all these lessons the phrase "sit up" will have been ingrained upon her psyche with the assistance of frequent repetition. Now is the final training to teach your Bullmastiff to sit up right after she hears the words. There's a great chance, if she has been properly taught, you will simply have to call her out into the room, reveal to her a snack, hold it up a reasonable distance from the floor, say "sit up" and she'll obey. Then give her the reward while still in position.
The only necessity for perfection is to rehearse with your Bullmastiff multiple times daily until she can sit when told and without being shown a snack; give her the treats only once she has followed the command.
Teach Your Bullmastiff Other Tricks
You have now the foundation for teaching your Bullmastiff many other skills. She can now be taught to beg by waving your hand up and down in front of her paws, which she will move in conjunction with yours. She can also learn to salute by bringing one paw to the side of her head, or to hold something in her mouth, or to wear a hat on her head or wear other clothing.
When training a Bullmastiff to tolerate being dressed up, do not try to make her wear too many clothes simultaneously. Try at first with just a hat. Once she becomes familiar with that you could put on a jacket and steadily introduce her to the other clothing.
Take joy in "teaching your Bullmastiff the sit up trick" and most importantly have fun along the way!
Don't forget to check out these other articles about Bullmastiffs
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