How To Teach Your Dog Stand
Teaching your dog the stand command is great for vet visits, grooming and wiping muddy paws after a walk. So lets get in to how to teach your dog stand!
What you’ll need
- A quiet room/place with little to no distraction (to start with)
- Small tasty treats* (optional)
- Clicker** (optional)
- Patience
- Praise
How to
- Start with your dog in the sit position.
- Take a treat and hold it near their nose.
- Slowly pull your hand away from the nose towards you.
- Their head should follow the treat and their bottom should lift off the floor.
- Take a step back if you need to, to allow your dog plenty of room to follow the treat.
- You may need to take a few steps back to encourage your dog to stand.
- As soon as fully standing, click and treat.
- Repeat steps 1-5, until your dog understands to stand when you start to move your hand away.
- Now stop holding the treat and just do the hand motion, and repeat until your dog is consistent.
- Time to add in the voice command Stand.
- Say ‘stand’ and complete your hand motion, click and treat when your dog stands.
- Continue to use the command word and slowly make your hand motion smaller.
- You can also now start to practise stand starting from the down position, following the same steps, but you can use the command word straight away.
Next
When practising sit, down and stand, it is good to alternate between all three once your dog has learnt them all strongly. This is so that your dog can’t assume what’s going to be he next command, if you were just doing sit and down. It makes your dog have to think more and thus will build a stronger command.
Important notes:
- Make practices short but regular! If a training session is to long your dog will get bored and the skill will become weaker.
- Clicker: Timing is everything, click to early and they’ll learn to hover, click to late and they’ll struggle to associate the click with the bum touching the floor.
- Voice: same as the clicker with timing and make sure your voice is happy.
- If your dog isn’t making it to stand and sits back down as soon as their bottom comes of the ground, make sure that when your luring the treat away and that it is staying level or slightly down from their nose. You shouldn’t be raising your hand at all! (it may encourage your dog to start jumping)
Any questions on how to teach your dog stand? Don’t hesitate to ask!
*Please note you don’t have to use treats while training, you can use nothing or a toy.
**Please note that you don’t have to use a clicker while training you can just use your voice, but make sure your voice is happy.
Pingback: How to teach your dog down - Dog Training - Cali's Club