SIT - STAY - COME

These tricks are the staple of your dog's discipline. Every dog must obey these three commands or everything else means nothing. High five, and shake are nothing if your dog doesn't come on command.
They are, believe it or not, easily taught and learned. They do, however, take the most work, and patience. These tricks have an easy start, but take a lot of honing and perfection to get your dog to do it in ANY and EVERY SITUATION.


Sit is first. Also, the easiest. The only way I know how to explain how to teach a dog sit it this: Take your training treats, and offer to the dog over the top of his head (from the nose to between the ears), WHILE SAYING "SIT". The dog will automatically follow the treat and sit down! It's like magic! Now you get all excited again, say "good boy/girl" and pet them happily. Do that a couple times and the dog will soon understand and react without the motion of the treat over the head.

The next two kind of go hand-in-hand. The problem is that "stay" is an implied command, meaning to the dog there isn't necessarily any specific action. It will take them a while to disassociate the difference between "sit" and "stay" because at first to them it will seem like the same. First I will explain how to put the "sit, stay, come" training into action and then explain how to separate the "sit" and "stay" commands.

So, once you have "sit" down, then you move onto "sit, stay, come". Get your dog to sit. Then put your hand up like a stop sign, say "staaaaay" and then back up, only a foot at first, and say "COME". That's it! Heh, heh. Sounds simple enough, I know, but believe you me, we worked on these for weeks before we got it down to where I was happy enough with it.

So the best way to separate these commands so that the dog understands the difference between them is this. Do the sit command as stated before, then give a treat, and good boy! (this is where the importance of training treats comes in, because you need to be able to praise the dog, and them have them come right back to attention, not chew on something for ten minutes and lose track of what you were doing....a.k.a. cheerios) Next say "STAY" with your hand as a stop sign, holding your hand up as you back away, with another treat in your other hand. (note: they know you have it) Then back up a short distance, and say "(NAME) COME!" firmly. I also snap at the same time, it helps them to understand a sound with a command, and they eventually put the snap with whatever word you say with do something, and quickly! They will hopefully come to you and then you give them the treat and praise and love them ecstatically! As you do this over and over, and over, you can slowly back up and increase the distance from which you call come. This will help them understand "stay" and "come" even better. 
We started in the house with small increments in feet. Then we moved to the stadium with yard lines, and went from 5yds to 10, 20, 30, and then to me being able to turn around and have him still stay where I put him until I could go 100+yds without him moving until I whistled or called. There is another point, once you get them to understand "come", you can turn it into a whistle or anything else you want.
So there you go, I know that seems really easy, but it is. It just takes time and perseverance. Hit me up if you need any other pointers!