How to maintain sit position?

Yesterday I started playing fetch and tug with J-Roc. During that time I started having her sit, lay down and wait to be released before fetching her toy. She did so well following the commands that I did the same routine with her tonight.

While I was cycling through the commands I noticed that she would slide into a down after about 5 seconds into a sit. When she would go into a down I would tell her to sit but she won't move back into a sit. I tried luring her with the toy into a sit but she just kept trying to bite at the toy while still laying down. My next move was to have her stand up then go back into a sit. When J-Roc started to lay down again, I interrupted her with a soft "no".

I'm not sure where I'm going wrong on trying to teach her to stay in the sitting position. Or do you think it's possible that since she's always been asked to sit from a standing position that she's confused about being told to sit when she's laying down instead of standing? Either way any suggestions on how to teach J-Roc to maintain the sit position and how to move from a down position into a sit without having to transition into a stand first would be greatly appreciated.

I would just go back to basics for it. Use food since it sounds like the toy puts her over threshold with something she doesn't understand well.

If she can't hold the sit for 5 seconds reward her at 4 seconds. Keep changing the reward interval and upping the length of time you have her stay in the sit. Try to release her before she breaks.

Same with going to a sit from a down, go back to food rather than a toy. If she jumps right up into a stand when you try to fully lure her then break it down a bit and reward her for stretching up as long as her butt stays on the floor and continue to increase your requirements.

Basically, go back and pretend she doesn't know either of these at all. You'll probably go faster than you did the first time but it'll help really clean them up and show you where your holes are. Nothing like bringing out a toy to really show how well your dog actually knows these behaviors!

Yeah dogs can be pretty terrible at generalizing, so if you've never worked on teaching her how to pop up into a sit from a down position... she might just have no idea what you want. It's really a pretty different picture from the "sit = slamming my butt on the ground" idea that dogs are generally more used to.

It's pretty easy to teach, just stick some food in front of her nose while she's lying down, and lure her head up and behind her a bit, to encourage her to move right into a sit position instead of standing up or moving forward. I don't know if all dogs make it this complicated, but with Juno I essentially had to teach this like a completely new command, meaning I had to introduce the verbal command and fade out the hand signal eventually.

Do you pretty commonly ask her to lie down after you ask her to sit? If that's a pretty typical routine, then she could just be anticipating that that's what you want her to do next - so instead of waiting for you to ask, she just lies down on her own. If this is the case then it's helpful to just start varying the order in which you ask things so it's more unpredictable, and she'll have to listen for what you want next instead of just assuming "down" is the next command.

Try building more value for the position. You have the same problem that I usually have with "down" lol both Juno and Cajun had to really learn that you don't just jump back up into a sit 2 seconds after lying down. Basically for them it'd be something like - I'd ask them to lie down, and once they did I'd quickly give them like 5 or so treats in a row just to kind of keep them there for a second. Then I might wait a couple seconds, give a treat. Wait a couple seconds, treat. Release. Rinse and repeat. You would do the same thing, just with the sit position. It's kind of like teaching "stay" just without the word... you just make them think it's really awesome to do nothing but stay in that position.

I think this is the confusing part for a lot of dogs though, most people teach a separate "stay" command. So when it comes to just your regular sit/down stuff, they don't really have any idea how long they need to stay in that position if you didn't specifically tell them to STAY.

Good God I don't know why I got so ramble-y. I'll stop.

I thought I had replied to this thread, sorry about the late response. So far, she's maintaining the sit position without sliding into a down. Which means we're getting somewhere albeit slowly but progress is progress!

Linds, thanks for the advice! You pretty much nailed what I was doing wrong with the toy. She was so worked up about the toy that it's as if she went into auto-pilot and would cycle through the commands hoping one of them would land her the toy. Food based rewards don't push her over the edge to where she can't focus on what I'm asking of her.

Southpaw, luring her into the sit position is starting to click with her so a big thank you for the suggestion! I've slipped on daily practice but we're back on routine now. What I've realized is she thinks "leave it" means stay and don't move from the position. J-Roc apparently doesn't know she can move around as long as she doesn't pursue the whatever it is I told her to "leave it." I'm not sure how to teach her the difference between stay and leave it? I've never taught her stay and wouldn't know where to start.