Teach any dog to sit in minutes

You've probably heard the cry: "my dog sits just fine at home, but he won't do it here". This is normal. When you go to the park, there are smells to sniff, people to look at, perhaps even other dogs. The way around this is not to despair, but just to practice your sits in slightly more and more distracting environments. After doing it in the house, try the back yard. Or maybe the parking lot. Only after you have practiced sits in a variety of locations, move up to using the command when the dog wants something else. For example, when you and your dog answer the door, eventually you'll be able to tell your dog to sit so you can answer the door. But meeting a new person is high distraction, and so until you've gotten good at sits in easier settings, you might need to rely on a leash or other means to deal with the door. Progress can seem very slight from day to day, but if you keep practicing sits which your dog gets right (give them a chance to succeed), then you will find that little by little you can work up to more and more distracting situations.

When you are first teaching a new behavior, you should offer your reward on every successful sit. As your dog gets better, cut back to rewarding about 50% of the time. You can cut back further, to rewarding only when you need to brush up on a behavior which has gotten rusty, or you can keep rewarding 50% of the time, but a variable reward is actually more effective than a predictable reward. Whether you want your house to look like mine, with jars of treats scattered throughout, is up to you.

Sitting on command becomes more difficult if you and your dog are across the room from each other, or across the field. This is partly due to just the way canine psychology works: they are slow to figure out that sit-at-a-distance will get them a reward just like sit-next-to-you. But of course there is also the question of how to provide the command and reward.

First of all, you need the dog's attention. Rewarding them for looking at you when they hear their name can help, or whatever gets them to look at you. As soon as the dog looks at you, give your command (hand signal and/or voice). If they sit, praise them instantly. The praise has a specific purpose here. Because of the distance, your dog will face a short delay before they get their food reward. The praise lets them know that they have done what you wanted and the food is on its way. So then you can toss them the food treat or go over to them and give it.

There is little substitute for actually trying these techniques with your dog. Sure, you won't get it quite right at first: you may make an indecisive motion, pause too long between attempts, or not be sure when to reward and when not to.

All this is par for the course. You are learning too, and failure to provide a perfect training session is rarely going to prevent your dog from learning something. Make sure to have fun and enjoy the time you are spending with your dog. Take a break and come back to it (this will help both you and your dog, if the frustration level is building). Vary the rewards (try a game with a rope toy or ball as a reward). Teach them other tricks to mix in with their sits.