How to teach your dog down
The down command is great anytime you need your dog to settle down, whether it be inside or out. So lets get in to how to teach your dog down!
What you’ll need
- A quiet room/place with little to no distractions (to start with)
- Small tasty treats* (optional)
- Clicker** (optional)
- Patience
- Praise
How to
- Start with your dog sitting or standing.
- Take a treat and hold it near your dogs nose.
- Move your hand down from their nose, down passed their chest and straight to the floor.
- Your dog should follow the treat down into the lying position.
- As soon as they’re lying down click and treat.
- Continue with steps 1-5 until your dog has a strong grasp of this.
- Now add in the command word Down
- Say ‘down’ and do your hand signal.
- As soon as your dog is lying down, click and treat.
- Continue with 8-9 a number of times.
- Once your dog is associating ‘down’ with the down position, you can start to make your hand signal smaller and eventually take the hand signal away if you want.
Important notes
- Make practices short but regular! If a training session is to long your dog will get bored and the skill will become weaker.
- Clicker: Timing is everything, click to early and they’ll learn to hover about the floor, click to late and they’ll struggle to associate the click with lying completely on the floor.
- Voice: same as the clicker with timing and make sure your voice is happy.
Next
When practising sit, down and stand, it is good to alternate between all three once your dog has learnt them all strongly. This is so that your dog can’t assume what’s going to be he next command, if you were just doing sit and down. It makes your dog have to think more and thus will build a stronger command.
Any questions on how to teach your dog down? Don’t hesitate to ask!
*Please note you don’t have to use treats while training, you can use nothing or a toy.
**Please note that you don’t have to use a clicker while training you can just use your voice, but make sure your voice is happy.
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