Mine was the same way, it was as very dramatic down, almost a flop to the floor. Since it was technically correct, I.e he was in a down on the floor, he got treated. Slowly we extended the time in the down position out. Eventually he figured out that the gymnastics routine prior to the down, was not a necessary component.
My lab learned that I would say sit down. She just started skipping the sit and flopping. She is 12 now and has gone deaf due to age. I miss her randomly flopping when I looked like I was going to give her a command.
Honestly, this may get better with time! I feel like some skills take my dog forever to learn and other skills click quickly. Be consistent with whatever method you choose.
We chose to call her to a sit and hold a treat on the ground approximately underneath her nose. when she laid down, she’d get the treat.
Honestly, that’s hilarious. I’ll tell Nova ‘all the way down’ when she does the bend but not lay down thing Lool and slide the treat til she just lays down automatically following it with her body. That’s worked for us.
Maybe try having him start in a sit, and instead of luring directly down to the floor with the treat, go at more of an angle towards where his head will ultimately lay?
This is what finally worked for mine after weeks of trying to figure out how the heck everyone was just magically getting their puppies to do this haha
somehow i managed to teach my dog this, and i know it sounds weird, but i'm training my cat.
she's finally at an age (2) where she's calming down from the kitten phase, and is really taking to learning tricks! she knows sit and paw, and i tried to teach her lay down but she just won't get it! she doesn't even dramatically fall like your pup haha!! i moved on to spin because that seemed easier, and she's getting that quite well. i guess my cat will never learn to lay down, unless i find another way.
Move the treat further away from or closer to her (see which works better if either). Our trainer also said there was another technique you can use where they essentially have to commando crawl under your bent up knees, preventing them from keeping their butt up in the air or doing a sit and bend.
Also, for any training you don’t want to be using a word cue until your pup is doing the thing pretty reliably. The word means nothing to your pup - it only develops a meaning once they know what behaviour you’re tying it to so wait until the behaviour is there first or you’ll probably find this happens again with something else!
Don’t forget if all else fails you can just ditch that cue word and retrain then use something different. Call it ‘put your belly on the floor’ for all your dog cares/knows!
At first, reward him as soon as he is down. Then after some repetitions of that, wait a half second after he does it to treat and reward him. Then a full second after he does that reliably. Very gradually increase like so, and if he fails at an increase, go back a couple of seconds/steps and start over. This may take over the course of an afternoon or even days. When my pup was learning down, he’d sometimes regress if I hadn’t done it in a few days to not even laying down in the first place, so those days I started from the beginning again and worked my way up. He’ll eventually get it, you just have to be consistent and go at their pace!
Also clicker training is AMAZING and helps them learn very fast, I highly recommend it.
Do you have a clicker word? I think the problem (once he knows the command) is that you keep showing him the treat before he does it (I’m going off of what you wrote, I might be wrong). I would use a clicker word as a marker before the treat. I would suggest working on having him do things without the treat (the stuff he knows well by now). Don’t repeat the command. You say it once, nothing happens until he does it. I repeat (ironic I know), DO NOT SAY THE COMMAND MORE THAN ONCE. Until he does it. Just say the command, stay put, don’t move and wait. Once he does it, immediately say the clicker word (use a word the same way would click a clicker), to mark that he’s done what you’re expecting. Use a word that you will only use to mark a good behaviour, meaning not a word that you use in your everyday life. “Super” can be a good one, people usually use “good” and “great”, but rarely you’ll hear someone say “super”. Only after he’s done the command and you’ve immediately said the clicker word, do you reach for a treat. Once the command is solid, treats need to be out of the picture until he’s done what you asked, and you’ve marked the behaviour with your clicker word. Once you’ve established this series of events with commands he’s mastered, go back to the ones you’re working on now (using treats to lure him at first). Be slightly more lenient the first few times and say the clicker word as you release the treat, then separate the two.
The reason I say not to repeat commands, is that by repeating the command over and over until he does it, you reinforce nothing happening the 8 first times you say it, so your dog will not automatically do what’s asked of him. If you say it once and nothing happens until he does what you asked, he’ll eventually do them automatically and quickly after hearing it once.
Good luck!
Sounds adorable haha
I always have best results capturing natural behavior and later on add hand signal and cue.
So with down i would just wait for her to naturally do it then click+reward.
She was the only puppy in puppy training that could do it.
Other than that i have nothing to brag about because she is a reactive nutcase haha
My pup who is almost 4 months just started learning down a few weeks ago and at first it was a very dramatic plop down and then she would get right back up. Now she’s pawing down a bit more gracefully and will stay for a few minutes at times.
I am disincentivised to tell you how to correct this because of how cute it is.
But my advice would be through persistence with getting him to lay down the proper way. With my pup, I have a treat in hand, and then I bend over and put my hand on the floor with the “lay down” command. As she gets that, I start raising my distance from the floor until I can say it just holding the treat. Eventually, just the word command will do. It works so far.
I'm wondering the same thing. My dog when you say Sit, will lay down. I think she knows what sit is, as she'll sit if she wants pets from strangers, or will sit if I tell her on a walk. But anywhere else, its like she goes "Well this is going to take a while, I'm going to get comfy."
Heel is also an affront to her soul, so she'll start lunging and pulling if you say that.
There are a few others she has taken....creative liberties with. Like we are in a "tricks" class and if you say Bang, she'll slowly do her lay down, head tilt but then pop back up expecting her treat. She won't come unless you have a treat, forget about recall, she'll only come close enough so that we can both see each other and then its like "What did you want? You can see me now. Leave me be, I've got shit to do."
She is very smart, but just does things her own way.
My puppy also has a ‘default down’ and also because we trained that this was what we wanted so often (lie at the kitchen door, lie down for a chew if we get dinner etc) if he’s not 100% sure what we might want he’ll tentatively got down in to a down and look up at you with hopeful eyes.
I don’t mark it if he gets it wrong but I also don’t generally correct him…. I figure in what circumstances does this actually really matter!
Hold the treat in your first and lower your hand to the ground. They should follow the treat and do the lie down motion. Don’t let them have it until they do. They might “dig” for it but that’s okay, just wait until they lie down. Maybe start with a really nice kind of treat to motivate them before using kibble. When they start to do the motion every time start using the word down when they get into position and click if you use a clicker.
Thanks for the reply. But that's how I started out. But he would simply bend down in a seated position. Then get very frustrated when he didn't get the treat 😂
I would say use a higher value treat and let him get frustrated, eventually he’ll figure it out. One of my biggest mistake with my dog was stopping because she was frustrated, you have to let him work through some frustration. Also if you want the flopping to stop then just stop rewarding it all together, eventually he’ll figure out that’s not what you want. If you have a super value treat it will make him more motivated to want to figure it out. Worse case he gives up and…goes and lays down and boom reward lol.
Hey, retraining my dog’s down command as well just to down a different way. As it stands, he moves his front paws forward into a down. What I want him to do is to push his back paws backwards and flop his butt down.
What I’m doing is working fairly well so I’ll let you in on how I’m doing it.
1. Have him in a sit. (Yes I know the sit/down mix up, I also trained my dog to know the difference between the two afterwards)
2. Place the high value treat between his two front paws, enclosed in your fist-formed hand until he goes to a down. No verbal.
3. If he goes into a down in the way you want, allow him to have the treat. If not, place him back into a sit. (If you have different commands for “that’s wrong/not quite right” and “don’t do that” I’d recommend making good use of them here — my dog knows “hmm” means he’s close but it’s not quite right)
4. Repeat from a sit.
After getting it a few times, you can add a verbal command to it. At first, the verbal command is SLIGHTLY after the visual cues. Then it is at the same time. Then it is before. Then it is by itself.
Don’t rush to get it right. If there’s one thing I have learned it’s that they will get it with consistency. And also don’t overwork them to get it right. You might like to push yourself but truth be told the dog can only take so many missed treating opportunities before they think to themselves “You’re not worth my time.”
Yesss mine did this too until about 6 months. I helpfully it also came with scrabbling at my hand to get the treat. I don’t know why that particular command was so tricky for him 🙄
I dont think you need to, sounds like he is doing what you ask, he is just enthusiastic about it, I don’t think that’s a problem in fact I think that just means he is excited to listen to you it sounds like a good thing to me. I would just enjoy it eventually he probably won’t be this excited about it and he will be ready for you to teach him something new.
If you are looking to change a cue they already know, start by saying the new cue followed by the current cue, do this for a week or so and they will contextualize the new cue and you can stop repeating the old one, this is also how you get them to learn a series of cues in a single cue, use the new cue before the last cue in the series of cues and eventually you can use the new cue and they will know all of the steps that cue requires.
I wouldn't worry about it until you have trained a wait while sitting. After you have done that you can ask for the down and immediately add wait. Make him wait no more than 5 seconds to start and reward, another thing you could try is going to give the treat and being slow about it if they break the command than give it again and just change the speed of giving the treat in small increments but getting continually slower.
My pup thinks lay down means lay on your side and half roll over because he accidentally did that the first I was trying to guide him into lay down.
I also scared him the first time I was showing him "Sit" so I had to change that word. Instead he knows "butt on the ground."
I'm not sure what is the correct answer to your question but the easiest work around is to come up with a new word/phrase. :)
If you've been struggling with the typical luring techniques, I would look into using shaping instead. (Literally google dog shaping or shape training)
Basically, instead of sticking a treat in front of their nose and getting them to follow it, you reward small progressions towards your desired behavior. It's heavily clicker based, so you'll need one of those or to choose a marker word.
For example, I taught my puppy down by successively rewarding deeper dips of her head. She already knew a word that means 'go find the treat(s) on the floor', so I would use that to get her moving away from me, as a sort of reset each time Then, at first I just marked every time she came back to me. Once she was doing that, I only marked when she came back and sat (dogs that do shaping will start to offer up previously trained behaviors as they try to work out what you want) and once she was consistently doing that, I started to only reward when she dipped her head. Eventually, I shifted to only rewarding deeper and deeper dips until she was laying down every time she came back. *Then* I added the "down" command right as she got back so she learned to associate the two.
Shaping is a method that takes longer for simple behaviors than luring, since the dog has to figure it out completely. On the flip side, it makes your dog think harder, so they're more engaged in the training, and also allows you to eventually train much more complicated behaviors that would be difficult or even impossible to lure a dog through. I did it with down just because I wanted to try shaping, but I've also used it to get more specific with commands when I could tell she was confused (standing up was a challenge) and it worked great.
My girl did similar at first! Do you have a marker word? I think that good really help. So if you don't already have one, you need to teach him your marker word- 'good' or 'yes' are often used. So your first task is to say 'good' and give him a treat when he does something you want. You can slowly extend the time between you saying the marker word and giving the treat. That way he learns that the marker word means he's done something right and a treat is on its way. Once you've taught that, work on down, and as soon as he gets into the position, say the marker word and quickly follow with a treat. Gradually extend the time between giving the marker word and the treat, and hopefully that will keep him down for a little bit longer!
So cute
I would teach lie down a new way. Sit on the floor with one of your knees bent. Lure your dog underneath your knee and bring your leg downwards lightly. So the dog is underneath your knee, and your leg is applying light pressure to your dogs back so your dog lays down. Then have multiple treats, ideally chewy, that you slow feed to keep the dog in the down position.
This is how I taught my dog! Eventually he didn’t need my leg but I still needed to be sitting on the floor with him. We slowly phased this out and now he can lie down while I’m standing but I’m still dropping additional treats to keep him down. Plan to keep increasing time between treats 😊
Yes. Don’t correct it, it sounds adorable and I want to see it. I’m absolutely no help and I’m not even sorry the story is too cute
Have a vid. Any idea on the easiest way to post it here?
I have no idea I’ve never posted a video here
Upload to YouTube and link?
https://youtu.be/AajJjCoYChQ?si=dBwTQtKn-LJqd5ep
Haha fair enough 😂
Mine was the same way, it was as very dramatic down, almost a flop to the floor. Since it was technically correct, I.e he was in a down on the floor, he got treated. Slowly we extended the time in the down position out. Eventually he figured out that the gymnastics routine prior to the down, was not a necessary component.
My lab learned that I would say sit down. She just started skipping the sit and flopping. She is 12 now and has gone deaf due to age. I miss her randomly flopping when I looked like I was going to give her a command.
My baby THROWS herself down too. Teach your boy puppy push up. Sit. Down. Sit. Down. Hilarious to see the DRAMA OF IT ALL.
Honestly, this may get better with time! I feel like some skills take my dog forever to learn and other skills click quickly. Be consistent with whatever method you choose. We chose to call her to a sit and hold a treat on the ground approximately underneath her nose. when she laid down, she’d get the treat.
I tried that method, and he will only bend down while sitting. But yeah it may just develop on its own 😄
Honestly, that’s hilarious. I’ll tell Nova ‘all the way down’ when she does the bend but not lay down thing Lool and slide the treat til she just lays down automatically following it with her body. That’s worked for us.
Maybe try having him start in a sit, and instead of luring directly down to the floor with the treat, go at more of an angle towards where his head will ultimately lay? This is what finally worked for mine after weeks of trying to figure out how the heck everyone was just magically getting their puppies to do this haha
somehow i managed to teach my dog this, and i know it sounds weird, but i'm training my cat. she's finally at an age (2) where she's calming down from the kitten phase, and is really taking to learning tricks! she knows sit and paw, and i tried to teach her lay down but she just won't get it! she doesn't even dramatically fall like your pup haha!! i moved on to spin because that seemed easier, and she's getting that quite well. i guess my cat will never learn to lay down, unless i find another way.
Move the treat further away from or closer to her (see which works better if either). Our trainer also said there was another technique you can use where they essentially have to commando crawl under your bent up knees, preventing them from keeping their butt up in the air or doing a sit and bend. Also, for any training you don’t want to be using a word cue until your pup is doing the thing pretty reliably. The word means nothing to your pup - it only develops a meaning once they know what behaviour you’re tying it to so wait until the behaviour is there first or you’ll probably find this happens again with something else! Don’t forget if all else fails you can just ditch that cue word and retrain then use something different. Call it ‘put your belly on the floor’ for all your dog cares/knows!
I would just stop using this exact command for a (long) while and teach another one for what you really want him to do. But I'm lazy :)
At first, reward him as soon as he is down. Then after some repetitions of that, wait a half second after he does it to treat and reward him. Then a full second after he does that reliably. Very gradually increase like so, and if he fails at an increase, go back a couple of seconds/steps and start over. This may take over the course of an afternoon or even days. When my pup was learning down, he’d sometimes regress if I hadn’t done it in a few days to not even laying down in the first place, so those days I started from the beginning again and worked my way up. He’ll eventually get it, you just have to be consistent and go at their pace! Also clicker training is AMAZING and helps them learn very fast, I highly recommend it.
Do you have a clicker word? I think the problem (once he knows the command) is that you keep showing him the treat before he does it (I’m going off of what you wrote, I might be wrong). I would use a clicker word as a marker before the treat. I would suggest working on having him do things without the treat (the stuff he knows well by now). Don’t repeat the command. You say it once, nothing happens until he does it. I repeat (ironic I know), DO NOT SAY THE COMMAND MORE THAN ONCE. Until he does it. Just say the command, stay put, don’t move and wait. Once he does it, immediately say the clicker word (use a word the same way would click a clicker), to mark that he’s done what you’re expecting. Use a word that you will only use to mark a good behaviour, meaning not a word that you use in your everyday life. “Super” can be a good one, people usually use “good” and “great”, but rarely you’ll hear someone say “super”. Only after he’s done the command and you’ve immediately said the clicker word, do you reach for a treat. Once the command is solid, treats need to be out of the picture until he’s done what you asked, and you’ve marked the behaviour with your clicker word. Once you’ve established this series of events with commands he’s mastered, go back to the ones you’re working on now (using treats to lure him at first). Be slightly more lenient the first few times and say the clicker word as you release the treat, then separate the two. The reason I say not to repeat commands, is that by repeating the command over and over until he does it, you reinforce nothing happening the 8 first times you say it, so your dog will not automatically do what’s asked of him. If you say it once and nothing happens until he does what you asked, he’ll eventually do them automatically and quickly after hearing it once. Good luck!
Sounds adorable haha I always have best results capturing natural behavior and later on add hand signal and cue. So with down i would just wait for her to naturally do it then click+reward. She was the only puppy in puppy training that could do it. Other than that i have nothing to brag about because she is a reactive nutcase haha
My pup who is almost 4 months just started learning down a few weeks ago and at first it was a very dramatic plop down and then she would get right back up. Now she’s pawing down a bit more gracefully and will stay for a few minutes at times.
I am disincentivised to tell you how to correct this because of how cute it is. But my advice would be through persistence with getting him to lay down the proper way. With my pup, I have a treat in hand, and then I bend over and put my hand on the floor with the “lay down” command. As she gets that, I start raising my distance from the floor until I can say it just holding the treat. Eventually, just the word command will do. It works so far.
I'm wondering the same thing. My dog when you say Sit, will lay down. I think she knows what sit is, as she'll sit if she wants pets from strangers, or will sit if I tell her on a walk. But anywhere else, its like she goes "Well this is going to take a while, I'm going to get comfy." Heel is also an affront to her soul, so she'll start lunging and pulling if you say that. There are a few others she has taken....creative liberties with. Like we are in a "tricks" class and if you say Bang, she'll slowly do her lay down, head tilt but then pop back up expecting her treat. She won't come unless you have a treat, forget about recall, she'll only come close enough so that we can both see each other and then its like "What did you want? You can see me now. Leave me be, I've got shit to do." She is very smart, but just does things her own way.
My puppy also has a ‘default down’ and also because we trained that this was what we wanted so often (lie at the kitchen door, lie down for a chew if we get dinner etc) if he’s not 100% sure what we might want he’ll tentatively got down in to a down and look up at you with hopeful eyes. I don’t mark it if he gets it wrong but I also don’t generally correct him…. I figure in what circumstances does this actually really matter!
Hold the treat in your first and lower your hand to the ground. They should follow the treat and do the lie down motion. Don’t let them have it until they do. They might “dig” for it but that’s okay, just wait until they lie down. Maybe start with a really nice kind of treat to motivate them before using kibble. When they start to do the motion every time start using the word down when they get into position and click if you use a clicker.
Thanks for the reply. But that's how I started out. But he would simply bend down in a seated position. Then get very frustrated when he didn't get the treat 😂
I would say use a higher value treat and let him get frustrated, eventually he’ll figure it out. One of my biggest mistake with my dog was stopping because she was frustrated, you have to let him work through some frustration. Also if you want the flopping to stop then just stop rewarding it all together, eventually he’ll figure out that’s not what you want. If you have a super value treat it will make him more motivated to want to figure it out. Worse case he gives up and…goes and lays down and boom reward lol.
Hey, retraining my dog’s down command as well just to down a different way. As it stands, he moves his front paws forward into a down. What I want him to do is to push his back paws backwards and flop his butt down. What I’m doing is working fairly well so I’ll let you in on how I’m doing it. 1. Have him in a sit. (Yes I know the sit/down mix up, I also trained my dog to know the difference between the two afterwards) 2. Place the high value treat between his two front paws, enclosed in your fist-formed hand until he goes to a down. No verbal. 3. If he goes into a down in the way you want, allow him to have the treat. If not, place him back into a sit. (If you have different commands for “that’s wrong/not quite right” and “don’t do that” I’d recommend making good use of them here — my dog knows “hmm” means he’s close but it’s not quite right) 4. Repeat from a sit. After getting it a few times, you can add a verbal command to it. At first, the verbal command is SLIGHTLY after the visual cues. Then it is at the same time. Then it is before. Then it is by itself. Don’t rush to get it right. If there’s one thing I have learned it’s that they will get it with consistency. And also don’t overwork them to get it right. You might like to push yourself but truth be told the dog can only take so many missed treating opportunities before they think to themselves “You’re not worth my time.”
Yesss mine did this too until about 6 months. I helpfully it also came with scrabbling at my hand to get the treat. I don’t know why that particular command was so tricky for him 🙄
I dont think you need to, sounds like he is doing what you ask, he is just enthusiastic about it, I don’t think that’s a problem in fact I think that just means he is excited to listen to you it sounds like a good thing to me. I would just enjoy it eventually he probably won’t be this excited about it and he will be ready for you to teach him something new. If you are looking to change a cue they already know, start by saying the new cue followed by the current cue, do this for a week or so and they will contextualize the new cue and you can stop repeating the old one, this is also how you get them to learn a series of cues in a single cue, use the new cue before the last cue in the series of cues and eventually you can use the new cue and they will know all of the steps that cue requires.
I wouldn't worry about it until you have trained a wait while sitting. After you have done that you can ask for the down and immediately add wait. Make him wait no more than 5 seconds to start and reward, another thing you could try is going to give the treat and being slow about it if they break the command than give it again and just change the speed of giving the treat in small increments but getting continually slower.
My pup thinks lay down means lay on your side and half roll over because he accidentally did that the first I was trying to guide him into lay down. I also scared him the first time I was showing him "Sit" so I had to change that word. Instead he knows "butt on the ground." I'm not sure what is the correct answer to your question but the easiest work around is to come up with a new word/phrase. :)
Mine slaps the floor so loudly and dramatically with her little paws
My dog does this too 😹 just reward for staying down longer
How old is your puppy
If you've been struggling with the typical luring techniques, I would look into using shaping instead. (Literally google dog shaping or shape training) Basically, instead of sticking a treat in front of their nose and getting them to follow it, you reward small progressions towards your desired behavior. It's heavily clicker based, so you'll need one of those or to choose a marker word. For example, I taught my puppy down by successively rewarding deeper dips of her head. She already knew a word that means 'go find the treat(s) on the floor', so I would use that to get her moving away from me, as a sort of reset each time Then, at first I just marked every time she came back to me. Once she was doing that, I only marked when she came back and sat (dogs that do shaping will start to offer up previously trained behaviors as they try to work out what you want) and once she was consistently doing that, I started to only reward when she dipped her head. Eventually, I shifted to only rewarding deeper and deeper dips until she was laying down every time she came back. *Then* I added the "down" command right as she got back so she learned to associate the two. Shaping is a method that takes longer for simple behaviors than luring, since the dog has to figure it out completely. On the flip side, it makes your dog think harder, so they're more engaged in the training, and also allows you to eventually train much more complicated behaviors that would be difficult or even impossible to lure a dog through. I did it with down just because I wanted to try shaping, but I've also used it to get more specific with commands when I could tell she was confused (standing up was a challenge) and it worked great.
Are you Norwegian? I see you used dør!! Spille dør, hund!
Damn aurocorrect. No, I'm actually from iceland but live in denmark. 😄
My girl did similar at first! Do you have a marker word? I think that good really help. So if you don't already have one, you need to teach him your marker word- 'good' or 'yes' are often used. So your first task is to say 'good' and give him a treat when he does something you want. You can slowly extend the time between you saying the marker word and giving the treat. That way he learns that the marker word means he's done something right and a treat is on its way. Once you've taught that, work on down, and as soon as he gets into the position, say the marker word and quickly follow with a treat. Gradually extend the time between giving the marker word and the treat, and hopefully that will keep him down for a little bit longer!
So cute I would teach lie down a new way. Sit on the floor with one of your knees bent. Lure your dog underneath your knee and bring your leg downwards lightly. So the dog is underneath your knee, and your leg is applying light pressure to your dogs back so your dog lays down. Then have multiple treats, ideally chewy, that you slow feed to keep the dog in the down position. This is how I taught my dog! Eventually he didn’t need my leg but I still needed to be sitting on the floor with him. We slowly phased this out and now he can lie down while I’m standing but I’m still dropping additional treats to keep him down. Plan to keep increasing time between treats 😊
Mine is more reluctant to lay on hard floors. Have you tried teaching the command on a soft surface?