# What to Teach Your Dog First: Three Foundations That Come Before Sit and Stay
Certified dog trainer Jae Thomas challenges conventional wisdom about canine training priorities. While most dog owners assume sit, stay, and loose-leash walking form the foundation of obedience, Thomas argues that three different skills should come first.
The traditional approach to dog training has dominated for decades. Pet owners bring home a new puppy or adult dog and immediately focus on teaching sit, a behavior that looks impressive and feels like measurable progress. Stay follows, then loose-leash walking. These commands form the backbone of what trainers call "basic obedience." But Thomas questions this sequence, suggesting it puts the cart before the horse.
Thomas recently discussed her training philosophy with Kate O'Connor in a video interview for Whole Dog Journal. Rather than jumping straight into formal commands, Thomas emphasizes three foundational elements that build the actual capacity for a dog to learn anything else.
The first foundation involves teaching a dog to focus attention. A dog cannot learn sit if the dog cannot maintain eye contact or attention on the handler. This prerequisite gets overlooked in traditional training. Many owners become frustrated when their dogs won't respond to commands, without realizing the dog never learned to tune out distractions and focus on the handler's cues.
The second foundation centers on building positive associations with the training process itself. Dogs need to understand that interacting with their handlers produces good outcomes. This goes beyond simply offering treats. Thomas emphasizes creating an emotional connection where dogs actively want to engage in training rather than merely tolerating it.
The third foundation involves teaching a dog how to learn. Not all dogs arrive with the same understanding of how training works. Some dogs have learned to shut down when confused. Others have developed anxiety around new situations. Building metacognitive skills, in essence, teaches a dog to approach new challenges with confidence rather than fear or avoidance.
These foundations operate differently from standard commands. Sit teaches a specific body position. Stay teaches duration of that position. But attention, positive association, and learning confidence operate as enablers that make every other behavior easier to teach.
Thomas's approach aligns with modern dog training philosophy that emphasizes relationship building over pure command compliance. Many contemporary trainers now recognize that dogs trained through positive motivation rather than correction learn faster and retain behaviors longer.
The implications for dog owners are straightforward. Before investing time in trick training or advanced obedience, invest in these three fundamentals. A dog with solid attention, positive training associations, and learning confidence will progress through sit, stay, loose-leash walking, and beyond at a faster rate than a dog pushed into commands without these prerequisites.
This reframing takes patience. Owners want visible results. But Thomas's framework suggests that three weeks spent building these foundations actually accelerates the timeline to solid obedience compared to the traditional method of immediately drilling commands.
For anyone bringing home a new dog or working with a rescue that needs training, this video from Whole Dog Journal offers practical guidance on sequencing. The order in which owners teach dogs matters less than ensuring each dog has the underlying skills needed to become a successful learner.