Dog Health Questions: My dog training question?

when my dog sits she cant jjust sit she always puts her paws up in the air. it seems as she has beg and sit mixed up. how can i get her to keep her paws on the ground when shes sitting? She always ends up losing her blance and hits me in the stomach or worse and its pretty painful since shes a huge dog.

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Recommended Answer:
Do a sit command. The minute the butt hits the floor, reinforce with a "stay." Hopefully she'll stay rooted to the spot. My dogs know with a stay that they shouldn't move hardly at all.

Additionally, you might want to use a "mark" command. At the very moment the dog gets it right -- butt hits floor -- most clicker trainers would click to mark the right behavior and treat. You can do this the same way with a quick "Yes" with the "s" pronounced distinctly. Each time my dogs get a "yes" then they know they've got it right, and won't go into 10 other "offered" behaviors to try and "get it right."

I think the two of these techniques will get you where you need to be.

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• Re-teach her.


• retrain using a different command,, and DO NOT offer reward until she is in sitting position.


• Dogs don't naturally sit like that. What is causing her to do that is probably because some human taught her that it looked cute. Therefore, you are going to need a lot of positive reinforcement to re-teach her.
  
  Teach her the command to "sit", and reward her only when she is in the position where her paws are on the ground. If she ever raises her paws like that again, tell her to "sit" and make a big fuzz out of her completion of command. Praise her everytime she sits with all the paws on the ground too. It might take anywhere from a week to a few months to completely modify her behavior, depending on how much your dog wants to please you. Just be patient and you will slowly change her.
  
  Ps. Make sure you refrain from punishing her when she does that because that will lead to her doing it again in the future for attention purposes.


• 'Shape' the desired behavior by first capturing it without a command (dogs frequently sit without being told - it's a natural behavior) and mark it (if you use a clicker you can use it here) and reward it. This will take a few repetitions before she catches on that the sit without the beg is what is being rewarded. You can then name the sit, and reinforce it intermittently for higher staying power. You can also name the 'beg', but don't reward it if you want to extinguish the behavior. The beg may increase at first (because she is used to being rewarded for it and doesn't understand why it's not working anymore), but it will die eventually if you NEVER reinforce it.