How to Teach Basic Commands: Sit, Stay, Drop, Come

Teaching your dog to respond to basic cues is one of the first things most owners want sorted after bringing a new pup home. In Australia, where off-leash beaches, shared footpaths and cafe culture are part of everyday dog life, a solid foundation of sit, stay, drop and come makes the difference between a dog you can take anywhere and one that stays home.

These four commands cover the situations that come up most often: stopping your dog from bolting out the front door, preventing them from swallowing something dangerous off the footpath, and keeping them safe near roads or other dogs. They also happen to be the building blocks for everything else you will teach down the track.

This guide breaks each command down step by step, using reward-based methods recommended by the Australian Veterinary Association. Whether you have an eight-week-old puppy or an older rescue, the process is the same — start simple, build gradually, and keep sessions short.

Start with sit (easiest to teach), then stay, drop it and come. Use small, soft treats like diced chicken or Zeal liver bites. Keep sessions to five to ten minutes. Practise in a quiet spot first, then add distractions. Always reward within one second of the correct behaviour. For leash pulling, stop walking the moment the lead goes tight and only move again when the dog returns to a loose lead.

Why These Four Commands Come First

Walk into any puppy school in Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane and the first session will cover the same four cues. There is a reason for that. Sit gives you a way to pause your dog before crossing a road or greeting someone. Stay keeps them in one spot while you answer the door. Drop it stops them from clamping down on a chicken bone at the park. Come brings them back when something goes wrong off lead.

Each one also feeds into the next. A dog that can sit reliably will pick up stay faster. A dog with a solid recall is easier to teach drop it, because you can call them to you and trade what they have for something better. Think of them as a set, not four separate tricks.

Beyond the practical side, regular short training sessions give your dog mental stimulation. For high-energy breeds like Kelpies, Border Collies and Australian Shepherds, ten minutes of focused training can tire them out as much as a thirty-minute walk.

What You Need Before Starting

Treats. Small, soft and smelly is the rule. You want something your dog can eat in under a second so you are not waiting around while they chew. Diced cooked chicken, cheese cubes, Zeal liver treats or Scratch training treats all work well. Save the fanciest option for the hardest exercise — that is your jackpot reward.

A quiet space. Start somewhere boring. A hallway, laundry or quiet corner of the backyard. The fewer distractions competing for your dog’s attention, the faster the penny drops. You can add distractions once the basics are solid.

Consistency across the household. Everyone who interacts with the dog needs to use the same words and the same rules. If one person says “down” when they mean “off the couch” and another uses “down” to mean “lie down,” the dog gets stuck trying to work out which one you mean.

Keep every session between five and ten minutes. End while the dog is still engaged and getting things right. Pushing past the point of focus teaches frustration, not commands.

How to Teach Your Dog to Sit

Sit is the easiest cue to teach because you are working with gravity. When a dog tilts their head back to follow a treat, the back end drops naturally. Your job is to mark that moment and make it worth repeating.

1. Hold a treat close to the dog’s nose. Close enough to smell, not close enough to grab.
2. Move the treat slowly up and back over the head. The nose follows the treat, the head tilts up and the bum goes down. Do not hold the treat so high that the dog jumps for it.
3. The instant the bum hits the floor, say “yes” and hand over the treat. Timing matters here. You have about one second to connect the reward to the action. A clicker can help if you struggle with timing.
4. Repeat four or five times, then take a break. Come back for another short round later. Once the dog is sitting reliably with the lure, start saying “sit” just before you move the treat.
5. Phase out the food lure. Use the same hand motion with an empty hand, then reward from your pocket or treat pouch after the dog sits. The hand motion naturally becomes your hand signal.

If the dog jumps up instead of sitting back, the treat is too high. Keep it just above nose level. If the dog walks backwards instead of sitting, practise with the dog’s back near a wall so there is nowhere to reverse into.

How to Teach Your Dog to Stay

Stay is harder than sit because you are asking the dog to do nothing, and doing nothing is boring. The trick is building duration and distance so gradually that the dog barely notices it getting harder.

Before teaching stay, pick a release word. This tells the dog when the stay is over. “OK,” “free” or “break” all work. Without a release word, the dog will guess when to move, and guessing leads to broken stays.

1. Ask the dog to sit. Wait two seconds. If the dog holds the sit, say “yes,” give a treat, then say your release word and toss a treat so the dog has to move to get it. This teaches the release word.
2. Add the word “stay.” Put the dog in a sit, show a flat palm (the classic stay hand signal), say “stay,” wait two seconds, step back to the dog, reward and release.
3. Stretch the duration slowly. Three seconds, five, eight, twelve. If the dog breaks the stay, go back to whatever duration was working and rebuild. There is no shortcut.
4. Add one step of distance. Take a single step back, pause, step back to the dog, reward and release. Over multiple sessions, add more steps.
5. Always return to the dog to reward. Never call the dog to you out of a stay. Otherwise the dog learns that stay means “wait a bit and then come,” which defeats the purpose.

Some dogs go from a five-second stay to thirty seconds in a day. Others need a week. Both are normal. Push too fast and you will spend more time resetting than progressing.

How to Teach Your Dog to Drop It

Dogs explore the world with their mouths. That means socks, sticks, dead birds and the occasional snail all end up in there. In Australia, where 1080 baits, cane toads and snake carcasses are real hazards depending on where you live, a reliable “drop it” is not just convenient — it can be a lifesaver.

1. Start with a toy the dog likes but is not obsessed with. Let the dog grab it, then hold a high-value treat right near the dog’s nose. Most dogs will open their mouth to take the treat, and the toy falls out.
2. The instant the toy leaves the mouth, say “yes” and give the treat. Then give the toy straight back. This last part matters. If dropping something always means losing it, the dog learns to clamp down harder and run.
3. After several repetitions, say “drop it” just before presenting the treat. Over time the words alone will trigger the release.
4. Practise with different objects and in different rooms. A sock, a stick, a tissue. Build toward the real-world situations where the command will actually matter.

Never chase the dog to get something away. Chasing turns it into a game and teaches the dog that grabbing things earns attention. Trade up instead — offer something better than what the dog has.

How to Teach Come (Recall)

Recall is the single most useful cue your dog can learn, and the hardest to get right in the real world. A dog with a solid recall can be trusted at off-leash beaches and dog parks. A dog without one is on a lead for life.

The challenge is that you are competing with every smell, sound and squirrel in the environment. So you need to make coming to you the best thing that happens all day, every single time.

1. Start indoors in a quiet room. Say the dog’s name followed by “come” in an upbeat voice. When the dog looks at you or moves toward you, reward immediately. At this stage, even a glance counts.
2. Add distance inside the house. Move to the other side of the room. Call the dog. Reward big when the dog arrives — multiple treats, excited praise, whatever makes the dog light up.
3. Move to an enclosed outdoor space. Attach a long line (a five- to ten-metre lead) as a safety net, but let the cue do the work. Do not reel the dog in.
4. Make recall a party every time. Never call the dog for something unpleasant. If you need to clip nails or give a bath, go and collect the dog instead. You want “come” to mean “something brilliant is about to happen.”
5. Gradually increase distractions. A quiet park, then a busier one. If the dog fails in a new environment, that is normal. Go back a step and rebuild.

One mistake that undoes weeks of work: repeating the cue. Saying “come, come, COME” teaches the dog that the word is background noise. Say it once. If the dog does not respond, move closer, get the dog’s attention, and try again at a shorter distance.

How to Stop Your Dog Pulling on the Leash

Leash pulling is probably the most common frustration Australian dog owners deal with. Dogs naturally walk faster than people, and the outdoors is a sensory overload of new smells, other dogs and things worth chasing. Walking calmly on a loose lead is a learned skill, not something dogs arrive with.

The good news: with patience and consistency, most dogs can learn polite lead manners. Here are three methods that work. Pick the one that fits your dog and stick with it.

Red Light, Green Light

When the dog pulls and the lead goes tight, stop walking. Do not yank the dog back. Just stop and wait. When the lead goes slack — because the dog looks back or wanders toward you — praise and start walking again. If the dog pulls, stop again. The first few walks will feel like you are going nowhere. That is the training. The dog is learning that pulling stops the walk and walking near you keeps it moving.

Direction Changes

When the dog surges forward, turn and walk the other way without warning. When the dog catches up, reward. Then change direction again. This keeps the dog guessing about where you are headed, which means paying attention to you rather than charging ahead. It feels odd at first but works well for dogs that tune out their owner on walks.

The Reward Zone

Pick a side — left or right, it does not matter as long as you stay consistent — and make that spot next to your leg the most rewarding place in the world. Every few steps the dog takes in that zone, deliver a treat. Gradually space out the treats as the dog starts defaulting to that position.

A few things that help regardless of which method you use: start in a boring environment with no distractions. Use high-value treats. Burn off some energy with a game of fetch before a training walk — a tired dog focuses better than a wired one. And consider a front-clip harness like the PetSafe Easy Walk, which redirects the dog’s momentum back toward you when pulling happens. The harness is not a replacement for training, but it makes the process more manageable while you are building the skill.

Avoid retractable leads. They teach the dog that pulling extends the available range, which is the opposite of what you want. Stick with a standard lead around 1.8 to 2 metres long.

Common Mistakes That Slow Progress

Sessions that run too long. Ten minutes is the ceiling for most dogs. For puppies under four months, five minutes is plenty. If the dog starts yawning, sniffing the ground or looking away, the session is over. Listen to those signals.

Rewarding too late. You have roughly one second to connect the treat to the behaviour. If you spend five seconds fumbling in your treat pouch, the dog has no idea what earned the payoff. A treat bag clipped to your waistband helps.

Inconsistent rules across the family. If one person lets the dog pull on walks and another does not, the dog gets mixed messages and the training stalls. Sit down as a household and agree on the words, the rules and the consequences before you start.

Only practising during “training time.” The best training happens throughout the day. Ask for a sit before meals. Practise recall in the hallway. Use “drop it” when the dog picks up a sock. The more these cues show up in real life, the more reliable they become.

Repeating the cue. Saying “sit, sit, sit” teaches the dog that the cue is three repetitions of the word, not one. Say it once. If nothing happens, reset and try again rather than layering on more words.

---

When to Get Professional Help

If the dog is showing fear, aggression or extreme anxiety during training, stop and consult a qualified reward-based trainer or veterinary behaviourist. The AVA maintains a training policy recommending positive reinforcement as the preferred method. Your local vet can refer you to a trainer who uses these methods. Look for members of the Pet Professional Guild Australia or trainers with a Certificate IV in Companion Animal Services.

Some behaviours — resource guarding, leash reactivity, separation anxiety — go beyond basic obedience and benefit from a tailored behaviour modification plan. That is not a failure on your part. Getting help early almost always produces a better outcome than waiting until the problem is entrenched.

---

Frequently Asked Questions