Dog Training Video on Lying Down
Follow these easy steps to teach your dog to lie down. Teaching your dog to respond to basic cues is useful to you as a pet owner and helps keep your dog under control in public.
Teaching your dog to respond to basic cues is really useful for you and helps to keep them under control in public. It helps keep them safe, and taught positively it really helps build the relationship between you and your dog.
To teach your dog how to lie down just follow these easy steps.
Step one: ask your dog to sit, hold a treat at the end of their nose and slowly draw the treat down to the floor between their front paws.
Never force your dog to lie down, or push on their back if they stand up, just go back to the beginning and start again. Hold the treat on the floor so they can't access it until they lie down and then release the treat.
Step two: once they're lying down, give them lots of praise and the treat - repeat the process until your dog is really comfortable with the movement of lying down from a sitting position.
Step three: repeat the process, but this time without a treat in your hand, do the exact same hand motion you were doing when you were holding a treat. This time, before you move your hand down to the floor, add the verbal cue 'down' or whatever you want your verbal cue to be.
As soon as your dog lies down, praise them and feed them a treat from your pocket - if they don't follow your hand, go back a step and start again with a treat in your hand.
Once your dog is responding to the verbal cue followed by the hand signal you can start to make your hand signal more subtle. Say your verbal cue and just use a subtle hand signal as backup in case your dog doesn't respond to the verbal cue.
As with all training, repetition and consistency is key - so give it a go and let us know how you get on.
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