Gun Dog Forum

Is there any harm in teaching a GSP to sit on command?

Thank you

Search the archives in General and Training. There is LOTS and LOTS of information.

The summary: It depends on what you want to do with the dog, when you teach it and how you do the teaching.

if you are going to teach it to hunt, i would either not teach it sit or wait until you get it whoa trained first. i get dogs in for training that are taught to sit before the whoa training and it sometimes makes the whoa training a bit harder and longer because the dog wants to sit down every time i work him on whoa'ing.

Sprig wrote:if you are going to teach it to hunt, i would either not teach it sit or wait until you get it whoa trained first. i get dogs in for training that are taught to sit before the whoa training and it sometimes makes the whoa training a bit harder and longer because the dog wants to sit down every time i work him on whoa'ing.

This has been my experience too. Teaching woah before sit nets better results. I don't think it's a matter of should you teach sit, because that's a matter of preference. But the bigger issue is when should you teach sit, if you decide you need to.

Like Greg said, there's at least 2 or 3 old, long threads on this topic. I think they were posted somewhere around 5 years ago, so look deep into the search results.

Lots of answers mostly opinions seem to confirm "do what you think is right per dog". As well as what your intentions are you would really have to provide more info.

It depends on what you want and need out of the dog? The down side is that when you go to put pressure on the dog , like stauching him up at a latter date , he may sit as a reaction to the pressure. If he now needs the discipline because he is in the house maybe you have no choice. I dont generally teach them anything but come untill they get to 10/12 months

Sit is fine after you have a 100% whoa broke dog.

Sit can also be a hard thing to overcome in a dog being shown in conformation.