Teaching More Advanced Commands to my German Shepherd

When teaching a German Shepherd advanced commands you must have a good strategy for the basic commands that you once started with. All dogs should be able to sit, lay down, wait, and to come to you on command. A few commands that I have taught my Shepherd are front, to me, sit pretty. She is six months old and now I am working on other commands like heel walking commands to make her heel then sit on command and wait. I am also working on spin left, spin right, and roll over. When teaching front i would make my dog Kawi come up to me straight ahead and sit and look up at me. This command did not take long because she is very eager to please me or anyone who is training her. Shepherds are known for listening to one person more than anyone else. With my family we have all worked on teaching her using the same commands and trying to use the same body languages. As she gets older we slowly change how we all train her and she is listening. This is great to have for when she is older because she will be able to listen to other people if an opportunity ever presents itself or if we ever go on vacation and have to leave her behind she will listen to the border. While I am no professional dog trainer I do think there are a few things that you can do that help with making training much easier. One thing that you can do is use the same commands. Make sure you use hand signals and voice commands. When training a good habit to have is to state the dogs name then the command so they know it is directed straight at them. Also when you state a command make sure that the dog does the command the first time. When doing advanced commands such as the command I do with Kawi called to me I would have a treat in my hand let her smell it then i would say to me and put the treat behind my right leg and then between my legs to the front making her be under me. Then give the treat and give her praise. I would then repeat this about 10 times to get it in her mind but not bore her. If a dog gets bored they will not want to listen to commands so keep training sessions short. Try to make the command make sense and the movements of your hands make sense with the command also. Sit pretty was a challenging command and it took awhile for her to learn the balance aspect of it. She now is a very good at balancing.