There is an old adage regarding the difficulty of teaching old dogs new tricks, but many owners also find difficulty with training new dogs as well. For those of you out there who fit into this latter group – fear not! Any dog is trainable with the right amount of patience and technique.
Sitting is one of the most important commands for a dog to learn. In fact, it serves almost as a prerequisite for many other commands that should be learned eventually (i.e. stay, lie down, etc). To borrow a different animal’s metaphor, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Likewise, there is no ‘right’ way to teach a puppy to sit so long as the end result is achieved. That said, I highly recommend using a reward based method. Those who use negative feedback to accomplish this may get the desired outcome, but find that it leads to other behavioral issues with their puppy down the road.
