Sit — Day 1 with your dog

What you need

✅Loaded marker word — non-negotiable prerequisite. Without it, sit becomes harder to teach, not easier.
🍗Small, smelly, high-value treats. The lure needs to be interesting enough to control head position.
🏠A non-slip surface — carpet or yoga mat. Hard floors make it harder for your dog to shift weight back into a sit without sliding.
⏱5 minutes. If your dog offers sits voluntarily before you start, good sign. If your dog is overexcited, take a 2-minute walk first.

Your Day 1 protocol

Reps 1–4: Lure the behavior

Hold treat to nose, arc back over the head

Hold a treat at your dog's nose. Slowly arc your hand back over their head, between their ears. As their head follows the treat upward, their hips will drop — mark the moment the sit happens, then deliver the treat from your hand. Don't ask them to sit first. The lure creates the behavior; the mark captures it; the cue comes later.

Reps 5–6: Fade the lure

Same hand motion, empty hand

Do the exact same arc motion with an empty hand. Treat comes from your other hand or a pouch. If your dog sits: mark, reward. If they don't follow the empty hand, go back to one more lure rep. Most dogs fade by rep 5–6.

Reps 7–8: Add the cue word

Say "sit" one second before the hand motion

Say "sit" once, calmly. One second later, do the hand arc. your dog hasn't learned what "sit" means yet — you're starting the pairing. Over 20+ repetitions across several sessions, the word will precede the behavior reliably enough that you can drop the hand motion. Not today. Today you're just starting the pairing.

If your dog sits and immediately stands up: mark the instant the sit happens, even if they stand right after. You're building duration later. Right now you're just marking the position. If they keep jumping up to get the treat, your hand is too high — keep the arc shallow. If they back up instead of sitting, train with your dog's back end near a wall.

Why sit is Week 1, not Day 1

Sit is in Week 1 because it's the fastest R+ skill to teach — most dogs will sit on a lure within the first 3 reps. But sit is also the skill most likely to fall apart in real-world contexts: the doorbell rings, a guest walks in, your dog jumps. What you're building today is the foundation of a sit that holds under distraction. That takes weeks. Today is the first rep of that long arc.

The real challenge with sit isn't teaching it — it's keeping the standard consistent. A sit that works "sometimes" is not a reliable behavior. It's a behavior on a variable reinforcement schedule that's become intermittently reinforced enough to survive without rewards. Intermittent reinforcement is powerful and makes behaviors resistant to extinction — but you need to be deliberate about when you thin the schedule. Day 1 is not the day to think about that. Just mark the behavior precisely and keep the session short.

Ready? Go train with your dog.

5 minutes. High-value treats. Quiet room. That's it.

✅ First session logged.

That's the hardest part. The first rep is always the activation moment — the moment this stops being theoretical.

Tomorrow: try Name Recognition → ← Back to dashboard

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