Down is the last of our three main obedience positions. Great for settling our dogs, having them hold long stays, completing husbandry tasks, doing cool tricks, and more! For our purposes, the criteria for down will be that the dog is in a down position and also has both elbows on the ground.
Lure Down
- Start with the dog sitting in heel position.
- Command the dog to “down”
- Keep one hand gently on your dog’s shoulders to discourage them from standing up, and guide the dog into a down position with a treat.
- Keep the treat close to your dog’s nose so they aren’t tempted to move out of the sit.
- You should not be pushing the dog down, let the food do the work for you.
- Once both elbows have touched the ground, reward the dog.
- Exercise Finish
Below is a video of Doug practicing lured downs in heel position. Notice how Ryan handles the leash (folding it up into his left hand while doing the down, then moving back to walking position) to prevent Doug from getting tangled in the line.
If bending over is difficult, you can modify this exercise to remove the distance between you and the dog. In the video below, Ryan demonstrates this with Cece while sitting in a chair. You can also have the dog get up onto a retaining wall, or raised surface and remain standing.
If your dog resists pressure, work through this with them. Anytime the dog stands or walks away, reset to the sit and try again. Raechel demonstrates this with Blazey.
What if my dog won’t eat treats?
If your dog is not food motivated, or is reluctant to down in new places, follow these instructions.
- Start with the dog sitting in heel position
- Adjust the collar high and snug with the running links coming out of the side of the dogs face.
- This is the same collar position we use for the manual stand.
- Kneel next to your dog
- Place your left hand on the running links of the chain, palm down, knuckles forward.
- Drape your left elbow over the dogs shoulders.
- Apply steady pressure to your dog’s shoulders, while you gently sweep the front legs out with your right hand. The feet should stay close to the floor.
- Praise the dog
- Exercise Finish
https://youtu.be/sQoj8-NG5_A
Down with Leash Pressure
After you have done 200 repetitions of the lured down, or the manual down, we need to start removing our body cues from the exercise. To start this process, we need to introduce the dog to a leash pressure cue along with our verbal command.
- Start kneeling or sitting near your dog, with your dog in the sit position.
- Apply steady downward pressure with the leash.
- This should be enough pressure that they notice, but NOT enough pressure to force them to move or lay down. This is only a cue to the dog, not a way to physically help them into position.
- Give the “Down” command and keep your treat hand completely still.
- The dog should not follow the treat hand towards the ground or get any additional cues from the treat hand. It is helpful for the dog to know you have treats, so they are motivated to try behaviors.
- If your dog does anything else besides laying down, reset into the sit again and try again.
- When your dog is in the down position, praise and reward with a cookie on the ground between their paws.
- You can then move the dog back up into a sit position, or do an exercise finish to start again.
As your dog gets quicker at this process, make two changes to increase the difficulty. 1) While keeping your treat hand completely still, set it higher and further away from the dog each time. The dog will have to learn to move away from the food to get the food, which is a novel training concept separate from down. 2) Move from kneeling/sitting to a standing position, and apply steady downward pressure by stepping on the leash gently with your foot. The downward pressure should still be just a cue to the dog, so we don’t need a lot of pressure here, and you should remain holding the leash in your hand as you apply pressure with your foot.
In the video below, you can see Blazey’s first few repetitions of down with downward pressure. Notice that Ryan has to reset her into the sit position several times. He does move his hand to get her interested in the treats, but it remains at the same relative distance to the dog the whole time. As Blazey progresses, the treat hand would move higher and further away.
Continue practicing the down with leash pressure until they will reliably down with only downward leash pressure.
Down Correction
The final step of teaching down is to make the dog responsible for their own actions. Just like we did with the sit, we also need to have a leash correction when the fails to do the down command. Since we just took the time to teach them that downward leash pressure means down, we will use that as our correction
- Start with your dog in heel position.
- Give the down command to your dog.
- If they do not immediately respond to the down command, slide your left hand down the leash close to the dogs collar, and maintain steady downward pressure as you guide them into position. This should be more pressure than the leash cue we used in the previous step.
- When your dog is in the down position, praise and reward with a cookie between their paws.
- If you dog gets up from the down before being released, repeat your downward leash correction until they maintain position.
- Exercise finish to complete the down.
- Repeat
In this video, you can see Raechel demonstrate the down correction with Bailey. Notice that the leash pressure is now strong enough to encourage the dog into the down position.
If your dog stands up instead of going directly to the down position, reset them into the sit position and try again. It is much easier for the dogs to down from a sit instead of a stand. Int he video below, you can see that in one of Qubit’s repetitions, she does just that and Ryan resets her into the sit.
In the video below, you can see Cody get up repeatedly from the down before being released. Ryan simply repeats the downward pressure correction until he is there for a second, then does the exercise finish to help him end while he is being successful in the down position.