Teaching a dog to Sit

Ah, feel like a blog master - third blog in three days? I think this might be a record for me :)Anyhoo.The most basic of commands. Sit.Traditionally, the sit is taught like: using food you would lure the dog until his butt hits the floor. as he does, you give him food. The dog stays in the sit while he eats.The difference in how I teach it, is that the very moment the dog sits (butt on the floor) - he can be released and get his reward. That means, he won't necessarily be eating the food while still in the sit position. This is quite a different concept to standard dog trainers/training - but it helps the dog understand what is required and what he is being rewarded for.Rather than rewarding for 'staying in the position' he is just being rewarded to 'get into that position'.  It's a very small difference, but when I made the change in my methods to using THIS way - I found that EVERY dog I worked with, no matter the breed, age, sex etc. the understanding of the command was a thousand times more effective.So, in summary:when teaching a new behavior, make sure the dog is fully focused. don't use the command at first, and only use the reward word (YES! or Good Boy) to tell the dog what he is doing correctly.Next step: we use hand signals/body language to communicate to the dog. e.g. hand up = sit, and down to floor = lie down; hands behind back = eye contact with me.Once we have clear hand signals and we see that the dog fully understands and performs under our hand signals - then we can begin to introduce the command (sit, down, watch me).The problem with most dog owners (and even trainers) they begin the 'voice command' wayyyyyyyyyy too early.  Impatience, or a delusion to thinking that the dog 'understands' us.By taking my time with a dog at the beginning, with the foundation, it will save me a lot of potential confusion or frustration from the dog when he's older.Then after that, we start to take away the hand signals so we purely have 'voice communication'. The training is varied in different situations so the end result would be that without any body movement on my part, I'll have a dog that responds to VOICE only. A short test would be for me to turn my back on my dog and ask him to 'sit/stand/down'.  If he responds correctly, I've done my work well.