Belive it or not yes your greyhuond can learn to sit. We thought we would share with you some of the training tricks and tips we use to do this. The first imporant thing when teaching your dog to sit is the treats. Finding something your dog adores will make his learning a lot quicker. Ours usually like fish, cheese or bits of chicken but you will quickly find what works for your dog. Teaching them to sit makes them learn to listen. Learning to listen is a key part of the training. Teaching sit can take a while, the actual teaching of it is a skill in itself. Once you start your training not just your dog will improve but also your own training skills. When we teach them to sit it's important that they learn to sit but also to sit until asked to get up (a great skill for the park). Our top tips When training use your command voice, this should be frim but supportive and encoraging. Don't just use your voice use hand signals too. This will help your dog learn quicker and is an excellent training tool. Be patient your dog will learn at it own pace. It doesn't matter if this is slower than your other dogs. Pracice several times a day in differnt locations eg. the garden, the park, the kitchen. This will help them learn to do the trick at any time and not just in your living room. Practice really does make perfect. We will be using the video below to talk though some of our training (well will be adding more vidoes soon) We have the video "Normans first sitting lesson." You'll see in the video I'm gently pushing down on him and gently pulling his neck backwards. When pushing him down its not about pushing to much. More about keeping the pressure. (This but can take ages, it used to take me quite a while but keep going you will get there) you will feel when he decides to sit down. I keep using the word sit as I do it. As soon as he sits give the reward with lots of excited praise. When he sits I keep him sitting for a moment and then ask him to stand back up. Again reward and praise. You can also put your arm behind their legs and push in and down to help if the first isn't working for you. Once they know the position it's a lot easier. Brining the neck up helps to encourage the sit. Then as he gets better you will be able to take your hands off sooner until he doesn't need them. So as your guiding him into sit pushing lightly down the way when you feel him sit you can take your hands off if he stops and gets up. Correct it and go again. He will get it with practice. We are firmly of the opinion that almost any dog can be taught to sit it just each one is different and needs slightly different training. This is Norman's fist lesson in learning how to sit. At the time of the video this handsome boy had only been with us a few days. Since then he has learned lots of new tricks. You can follow his story on our Facebook page. Ok my dog can sit now what? Once they have learned to sit they can take it to the next step. Choose which command you wish to use (we use wait) Start by getting them to sit, give the command, take a step back from the dog then reward and praise. Allow them to stand up follwed by more reward and praise. Each time you do this take an extra step back each time making the distance longer. If you have more than one dog you can try teahcing them to sit togeather. Be creative there is lots of fun things you can do once you have learned sit. If you have found this article usefull we would love to hear from you. We would love to see photos and vidoes of your dogs skills. Just use the #thesittinggreyhounds. Got another topic or trick you would like covered? Let us know in the comments section. 

