Come and Sit

Having a true reliable off-leash recall is one of the most valuable skills you can teach your dog.  Having the functional ability to recall your dog, in spite of distraction, frees you and your dog up to have a lot more fun!  You no longer have to rely on only attending dog parks with fences, you can enjoy off-leash activities like hiking with your dog, and most importantly, it allows you to keep them safe, and no, we don’t teach an emergency recall word.

In addition to a killer recall, sit is another valuable skill for your dog to have.  A reliable sit allows for management with jumping on guests, it helps teach a dog to settle and chill out, and it’s probably one of the first things you started to teach your dog or puppy. So keeping the importance and multiple benefits of each skill in mind, here are some things to consider when teaching and practicing come and sit with your dog.

• We do not intially pair come and sit together – A lot of trainers and dog owners would like for their dogs to come and immediately sit at their feet.  Although this is fine, we feel it’s best to initially teach them separately, and here is why:  If you tell your dog to come and them immediately sit, most likely you are issuing the most praise and rewarding the final action of the skill set which is sit.  In this case the recall is not always being marked and rewarded because we are in such a hurry to quickly move on to the sit.  We feel it’s important to mark both actions when teaching and proofing, often times we will have a dog recall to us and just praise them for their recall.  Later on, when both skills are pretty solid, feel free to combine the two.
• Pair together your recall and sit to help with jumping – Many dogs will jump on their humans with excitement when they come in from a recall.  As a way of dealing with this, issue an early, proactive sit (depending on the dog’s speed, about 3-6 feet away from you) so they have enough notice to slow down and execute a sit before they ever have a chance to ever jump on you.
• Pair together recall and sit to help with drive bys – Many dogs will recall into their humans and continue running right past them.  If this is the case with your dog, here is another excellent example of how an early and proactive sit can help with the “drive by” effect of a recall.   By issuing an early sit, your dog already has their next piece of information which just happens to be incompatible with continued running.
• Get creative with your sits – Teaching your dog new things is always fun.  Add something simple but fun to your dog’s sit such as having them come around behind you and sit in the heel position or have them swing around into a heel/sit.

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