How To Teach Your Puppy To Sit and Behave

You walk through the door and your puppy is all over you, lavishing you with affection and wanting to play. Your puppy behaves like he hasn’t seen you for days, even though all you did was make a quick run to the store. What do you do? Why of course you return the affection and play with your puppy. Why? Because that is what you want to do. And you don’t want to hurt your puppy’s feelings. After all, puppies give unconditional love, are so cute, and are a great source of entertainment and companionship.

Now let us take a look at what just happened. Your puppy has trained you to give her affection by misbehaving. Yes, I said misbehaving. And your puppy will expect the same results from others when they walk through the door so she will jump on them, pull at their pants leg, and nip their heels (there’s the misbehaving part). And remember, your puppy will grow up to be a full size dog that will jump up on people, pull at their pants or sleeves, and nip (bite) them - trying to get the same attention that she trained you to give her as a puppy.

I’ll bet right now you’re saying “That’s NOT what I want!” and then “But what do I do?”. Lets try the following.

You walk through the door and your puppy is all over you, lavishing you with affection and wanting to play. Do not even acknowledge that your puppy is in the same room. Do not make eye contact. Do not say a word to your puppy, no matter what. Just walk on by, open your mail, hang up your coat or whatever you would normally do if you did not have the puppy. In a short while your puppy will give up and sit. Immediately say ‘Sit’ and calmly praise your puppy - even give him a treat. In due time your puppy will learn to associate sitting and being calm with getting the affection he wants. And he has also learned the ‘Sit’ command.

What just happened? Your puppy has learned that jumping on you (and other people) won’t get him anything. Remember, even a scolding at this point is a form of attention. You have trained your puppy instead of your puppy training you. You are the boss - the alpha. And this behavior will carry on into adulthood. Now you have a dog that, when a guest or other family member walks into the house, will sit and remain calm. Your friends will look forward to coming over, instead of dreading it because they know the dog is going to jump on them.

Teaching your puppy to sit is the beginning point for obedience training, or just teaching him tricks. He will look forward to learning from you because he has learned that he will receive the affection he craves.

For more information -
For further information on typical puppy behavior, including a fantastic resource for training how-to’s and loads of detailed information on preventing and dealing with problem behaviors, check out SitStayFetch. Written by a professional dog-trainer, it’s an absorbing guide that deals with all the subjects a responsible dog-owner could ever want to know about - well worth a look.

Here is the link to SitStayFetch - Just Click Here.