The Fun Dog Trick Guide: The Lie Down 29/06/09
Want your puppy to lie down and chill out when you have people over? Learn how with these dog training tips.
- Fun Dog Trick Guide: The Crawl
- The Fun Dog Trick Guide: Fetch
- The Fun Dog Trick Guide: Play dead
- The Fun Dog Trick Guide: High Five / Paw
- Teaching Your Dog that Good Means Good.
- The Fun Dog Trick Guide: The Lie Down
- Training your puppy to stay on command.
- Training my puppy to sit.
- Training your puppy to understand its name.
An important cue for your dog to learn that will make you life so much easier. It can help with control and relaxation. I will run through how to get this behaviour on cue with some basic dog training techniques.
- Offer a treat as your dog takes the treat tell them ‘good’.
- Repeat this regularly until you say ‘good’ and your dog look’s for a treat.
- Your dog will now know that ‘good’ means they are doing something you like.
- Take the treat and put it on the end of their nose with your dog facing you.
- Take the treat down to floor with a slight pushing backwards motion whilst your puppy is licking the treat.
- The treat should end up in between your puppy’s front legs.
- As they lie down give the command ‘down’ and give the treat.
- Repeat for five minutes a day over the period of week.
- After the dog is lying down easily use your hand (like it had a treat in it) to guide your dog down but then treat with the other hand.
- After you pup has grasped this you can stand up and point to the ground giving the down command, give your dog some time and if they do not respond in a few seconds then just guide them again with your hand (it just means you have gone too quickly).
- It will take a fair bit of time to lose the hand signal but eventually you can give the command and your dog will lie down.
- Don’t forget to use the ‘good’ command every time he does something you like.
- See teaching my puppy to sit.
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4 Responses to this article
Hi, my 5 months old puppy knows a few commands. Most of the time, especially when she’s tired, she’s not too keen on doing it. Even when it’s meal time and her yummy treats are at stack. After I say down, she will sit there, look at me for a few seconds (can go up to 30seconds) and slowly (really slowly, one paw at a time) lie down. Question is, should I wait till she obeys at her own pace? Or should she just obey immediately? How do I make her obey immediately?
Keep on allowing her to lie down at her own pace until you are confident that she is doing it consistently on command without a lure. Then you need to start asking a little more of her – give her shorter time spans and only reward her with a treat when she gives the quicker response. Still make a fuss of her when she does it slowly but save the treats for when she reacts more quickly and slowly decrease the time allowance you give her to get a treat. So she gets the treat for doing it in 20 seconds then 19 etc. Also try getting her more enthusiastic by making it a part of a game ask her down in a friendly but sharp voice as soon as she goes down throw a toy for her to do a retrieve. Be careful with this though as you can end up with them lying down for a few seconds then jumping back up so throw a few stays in there before you throw the toy.
When you say “Repeat this at least twenty times” do you mean repeat saying good twenty times or repeat the first step?
The first step…sorry for the confusion there!