Training is such a huge part of owning a dog, it’s all fun with training commands to show your friends like paw, shake, jump, spin but you can’t forget about the basics and most important commands for your dog to know!
In this post we will be going through what we consider the 5 most important commands to teach your pooch including Sit, Drop, Stay, Come and Leave It. We’ll discuss why they are important and how to train them!
Sit
Sit is the classic and most basic of all the commands, for majority of dogs it is the first thing they learn – but why is it important? Well, several reasons! Of course, sit gets your dog into, well, a sitting position which can help in teaching them many things like not jumping up at the dinner table. It is also the base of a lot of more advanced tricks.
To train sit, start with a treat in your hand, then hold the treat out near your dog’s nose and move your hand slightly up. With most dogs, this will get them to go into a sitting position!
After this, continue luring your dog until they seem to get it, then add your verbal (and visual) cue and remove the luring.
If this method does not work, try gently (very gently) pushing down on your dog’s bum to encourage them to go into a sitting position. And of course, slowly remove this action and turn the sit command into just a verbal and visual cue!
Drop
Drop or down, is a very useful and important command for a lot of the same reasons as ‘sit’. It is great to get your dog lying down while you are watching TV or eating dinner as well as being the base to many other tricks like roll over…
To train drop, start with your dog in a sit! From the sitting position, hold a treat to your dog’s nose and guide them down to the ground. It’s as simple as that! Start practicing this repeatedly and add in your visual and verbal cues. Eventually you should begin to not lure your dog down to a treat and they just do it when you give the command.
Stay
Stay is a fun one to teach and simple to explain! Obviously stay is a command where when you tell your dog, they stay where they are. Now why is stay so important? Well, this command can really save you and especially your dog from getting into a bad situation.
For example, say you are at the dog park and a random dog is running around and playing with another dog more aggressively, you would hopefully be able to read the dogs body language and tell that it might be dangerous for your pooch to interact with that dog now because it is agitated and could possibly start an aggressive fight.
Then, your dog seems excited and is about to run up to the dog. You give the command ‘Stay’, and they stay! You have just saved your dog and the other dog from getting into a potentially dangerous situation.
(Of course, it is awesome for your pooch to interact with other pooches, but this example was just pretending that the other dog was clearly aggressive at that moment)
So how do you train stay? Well like all the commands in this post, it is relatively simple!
Start off by getting your dog in a sit. Then walk back two steps, walk back to your dog and if they didn’t move forward, reward them. Start giving them the ‘Stay’ cue just before you start walking backwards. Now over multiple training sessions, start gradually making the distance longer.
When you are starting out training this command, make sure you never get them to stay and then call them with a ‘come’. Of course, once they fully understand this command it is fine to do this but if you use this method to train the stay command, they will think stay is ‘Staying still and then running up to my trainer’ instead of ‘Staying still until my trainer says I can go’.
Once you’ve taught the basics of stay, you can start making this command more advanced by trying out this exercise:
Call your dog over to you, then whilst they are running to you, tell them to ‘Stay’. (You may also consider this a different command like Stop). If they stay, reward!
Please remember, the stay we used in our example was very advanced and a well-trained and practiced stay. In the example your dog was very excited or ready to go over to the other aggressive dog and so in this situation it would be very hard to get an excited dog to stay.
This command will take a lot of practice to get your dog to stay even when excited, however if you are in a situation like the one in the example, try to give your dog the stay command before they get hyped up!
Come
Arguably themost important command in this post, come is incredibly essential for every dog to know! This command can be used in many situations, from the bad situations to good ones. It can be simply to get your dog to come and get pats or as crucial as getting them away from roads.
If you leave the gate to your house open and your dog runs out, a good come command can give you a high chance of getting them to come back to you! If your dog is in a situation where they are off leash (or on leash) and run on to a road, come can get them back to you on the sidewalk where they won’t get hit!
Yeh, you can probably see now why come is so important!
Come is an interesting command to teach. The way we will start it off, won’t be the way we will continue training…
So, to start, get your dog in a stay, walk back a couple steps and call them to you saying ‘Come’. It may also help to get down to their level when calling to make it more exciting for them to come to you. Then, once they come, reward! Repeat this a couple times just so that they get a sense as to what the word means.
Now we won’t be using that method anymore. Now that we’ve got a start to the command; to fully train it we’ll be training it at random points in time. Yeh, sounds strange but trust us – it works and is probably the best way to train it!
So, when you are out on a walk with your dog, wait till they are not watching you and are distracted (maybe sniffing something or looking ahead). Then take a few steps back (as far as the lead lets you go) and say ‘come’. When your dog comes, reward them and continue your walk. Repeat this a couple times each walk!
This way is a great way to train a good come, especially as you are outside where there are lots of distractions, this gets your dog used to listening to you in more environments and can get your come ready for any situation wherever you are!
Other places/ ways to practice this are:
- At a dog park (whether on or off leash)
- At a park on a long leash
- Anywhere you are with your dog!
And that’s it! Just keep practicing this drill repeatedly until your dog’s got it and then practice it some more!
One thing to make sure is if you are out somewhere distracting for your dog like at the dog park, at a park etc. Don’t repeat the come command repeatedly if they’re not listening. This will just teach them that they can take as long as they want, and you’ll just let them come when they’re ready. Instead say it only once (or twice) and reward if your dog comes, if not, wait a bit and try again!
Leave It
The second most important command or maybe even tied with come is ‘Leave It’. Leave It can also be ‘No’ and is a command where your dog leaves whatever they seem to be taking interest in when asked. For example, you accidentally drop a piece of food on the floor, your dog starts walking up to it ready to feast and then you say, ‘leave it’ and they stop. You can then take that piece of food and put it in the bin.
So obviously this command is important for an obvious reason – you can stop your dog from eating potentially dangerous foods. What if in that example the food was chocolate, onion or avocado? It would have been incredibly bad if your pooch got to it!
So, to train Leave it, have your dog in front of you. In the palm of your hand, have a treat and have your hand open so that your dog can see it. When they try to grab the treat, close your palm and say leave it. Then open you hand again and if they do not try to grab it, reward. If they do try to grab it again, repeat the process of closing your and then opening it again until they do. Then reward.
After practicing this a few times over multiple training sessions, your dog should be able to completely leave the treat in your hand when asked. Now have them 2 or 3 steps away from you. Standing up, drop a treat near you and give the Leave It command. If they leave it, reward. If they do start walking towards it, then step in between them and the treat on the floor to block them from getting it and say the leave it commands again to remind them. Reward and repeat.
After many repetitions of this, your dog should be able to leave something dropped on the ground without you blocking it!
And that’s our top 5 essential commands to train your dog! We hope you enjoyed this post and it hopefully helped with your training at home! Stay tuned for more blog posts coming soon.
Feel free to give us some feedback and let us know what you think the most essential commands are on our Instagram @practice_paws or by emailing us on our Contact page!