My pup, Gypsy, has been a new dog since I started training her with the positive-reinforcement techniques I found here. I really can't thank y'all enough! She's responded incredibly well to clicker training, and now that I'm armed with this forum and a couple of Karen Pryor books, I'm excited to see how much she can learn. She finally has a reliable recall, and we're even working on "advanced" commands like "go to your mat" and "wipe your paws." More importantly, she seems to be much more at ease now, and (at least as far as I can tell) our relationship has never been better.
But I'm here because we can't seem to iron out the kinks on one of the most basic commands--"Sit." When she was much younger, I trained Gypsy to sit by telling her the command and then positioning her as desired. I now refuse to position her, but because I didn't train her by luring her into position I've found it difficult to get her to actually sit on command. She'll do it every time, but I often have to stop our interaction and make a point of ignoring her until she does it. If we're in a training session or I'm asking her to sit before I feed her, then she'll do it almost immediately. But otherwise, it can take five, ten, or even fifteen seconds for her to decide to obey the command.
I'd like to re-train her "Sit," using positive reinforcement, so that it becomes faster and more automatic. But because I taught her as a young puppy to sit as a way of asking for treats or pets, she will often offer a sit before I can even ask for it when I've got the clicker in my hand--making it hard to just have a training session focused on "Sit," which in turn makes it hard to try to extinguish the delays. How should I go about working on this? Do I need to return to square one and start luring her into position, then get her to associate the verbal cue with the sitting motion? Should I just keep the clicker on me more, so I can more consistently reward her when she sits quickly on command?
It's been a month or two since I posted, so here's a bit of refresher/background on my dog. Gypsy is a lab mix (probably with some collie, maybe with some great pyrenees or newfie) who just turned eight months old. She is a fearful dog by nature, and had a rough fear period between about five and six months of age; even now, her first reaction to a novel stimulus is fear and/or flight. I got her as a puppy and trained her with techniques that I now recognize as aversive (I know, I didn't know any better). When she was about six months old, she had a traumatic experience with her arch-nemesis, the apartment-complex dumpster, and we hit a low point--she was terrified of everything, including me, for a solid two or three weeks. We've turned things around through positive reinforcement (and a ton of TLC), and she's now much more confident with me, other dogs, and even strange humans. She should be hitting the "teenager" stage soon--she's up to about 75 pounds now, so I think it's safe to assume she's more on the "large breed" developmental schedule--but so far has remained a very calm, low-energy, and obedient dog. (But novel stimuli remain an issue--yesterday she saw her first skateboarder, and was in panic mode for three or four hours.)
Any and all help would be appreciated!
