Breaking it down

There are some things in life you can´t ignore. It is like when you build a house, you need a base to build on. When you learn howe to ride a bike, you have to have balance and befor you can run you have to learn to walk. When I was taught how to teach riding I learned that you tear every moment down in the smallest pieces you can, you train every bit separately and then you put them togehter two and two before you do three and three ad finally all together. When you do it that way you will allways be able to go back and train or correct a single piece if it turns out wrong later on.

So when I teach a spaniel to sit, the goal is that it shall spontaneously sit down when a bird fly over. To get there I start with having a puppy on a leash by my side. I softly  put pressure along the back of the dog with my hand, at the same time I hold a meatball over its nose, push the hindquarter down as I say "Sit". Then I do it the over and over again until the dog sits down before I have to push it down. Then I start to try to remove the helping pushing hand. Then I remove the meatball. And finally the dog can sit on the command "Sit". 
Then I start all over again with a long whistle signal, meatball and the pushing hand. And once again I strat with skipping the hand when it spontaiously sits down and after that remove the meatball. 
Then I add the handsignal, I rise my hand in the air instead of having a meatball, but I still use both voice or whistle signal & the pushing hand. After that I make it sit while I contiue to walk, while I run, while I call it to come. When all those go like clock work and the command "Fetch" is established, I add throwing things as a signal for sitting. Bouncing balls, thrown rocks, running kids, rabbits and bikes as well as flying birds, thrown dummies - they all start to mean "sit".
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But I can´t start with thrrowing thing until the foundations are put there, and I will allways have to start with foundations, like ground work, and if I´m failing in higher levels - there must be a base to go back to. Curios on what I think is basiscs??? You can read about it here