Molly, just over 4 months is doing pretty well with her training. Recall is (now) good, having had a bit of a relapse related to the back of the summerhouse. Sit and stay is pretty good too, perfect in the garden though not as good as I'd like when we are out. Problem is with 'down'. After several days of holding a tasty by her nose then lowering my hand, we were doing well BUT, idiot that I am, I started saying 'down'. Problem is she's a jumper upper and both OH and me have been using 'down' to stop her jumping up - how stupid is that ! So, I need to find another clue word. Have thought 'lie' but that doesn't sound too good for various reasons. Any (decent) suggestions would be much appreciated. We do need to control the jumping up as a matter of priority though, as she managed to turn on the cooker Sunday morning, jumping up and turning a hotplate control, and set fire to Alfie's box of Bonios which were temporarily on top of the cooker I know, my fault putting them there but its a small, short of space kitchen. Phew, tough stuff this pup raising isn't it?
FLAT? Or maybe FLOOR? I use Down for lie down, Feet for not jumping and Free when an exercise is complete. Ooh, DIRT as in Hit the Dirt.
I used 'drop' to mean 'down' for a long time. For various reasons we've recently changed to 'down' but 'drop' was useful.
Stryker uses; Down - Used for when he jumps or climbs on the back of furniture. Lay - Used for when I want him to lay down on the floor. I try to keep the commands to a single word but there are a few that are two or three words combined. Found a single "No" command doesn't get the point across so most times it's "Nooo, no" and I also treat him like a child at times and explain my reasoning. Could just be that is how I did it with the children in my family. Good luck!
Yes, pup-raising is tough! It has its rewards, though. I use 'down' for lie down and 'off' for jumping off furniture or jumping up at people, although I've also used 'paws' for Wispa when I want her to keep all four paws on the ground during her bouncy moments! Perhaps Molly was just trying to follow Alfie's instruction when she turned on the hotplate - he might have wanted them warmed up!
It was quite hard to teach Homer 'down'. He was very good at sit, so we had to practice down a lot to the point now that he's all grown up he goes into a down if we're not responding to his commands! This human training is hard work too!
I teach a hand signal I find it hard to remember words sometimes. Hand signals are good because i can use them from a distance now . I taught the hand signals first and use words for things i i know i wont forget or get confused.also when mister crazy pants gets very excited he will listen to my hands when my voice can get him more silly
I think "drop" is easy to contaminate, too ... "drop it!".... I use "floor" because I knew from the start I'd contaminate down or drop But, as @SwampDonkey says, I also use a hand cue (a downwards-facing palm, moving downwards) which is far stronger than my verbal cue.
I haven't got round to doing down yet....I might not bother, I'm not sure I use it all that much with Charlie.
Hubby has a stammer, it's not that bad anymore but he was conscious of it when having to train Homer so we use hand signals along side word commands. It's a good show when you can get you dog to do things from the other side of the room. He does sit, down, wait, heal, stop. All without words. My niece has a lisp and she loves training Homer with signals.
I had a few minor strokes and my brain goes on scramble sometimes it just makes life easier and does help with an excitable chap like Rory. It's really good with kids too because I can do a hand signal when they give Rory a command and they love it when he does what they ask. It's fun for them and dogs are not so scary anymore. All my old dogs have gone deaf it helps then too.
Here a lot of people have a separate word for downing on a recall and the popular word is DROP. I was already using DROP It for dropping something out of his mouth and anyway, found Down worked just as well from a stationary or moving position. But some obedience teachers really like a separate word so if competitive obedience is ahead ....
The words don't matter as long as I use the same one. Because of my problems I do use odd words ones that come easy. I don't say Rory crate I say Rory thingy because thats one that i can get right consistently crate can be difficult. i mean remebering the word. I also use body position I can get my dogs to sit by leaning back I can do a recall by holding my arms out horizontally. Its just makes it easier for me. I do a not talking day or no treat day just to see what we can do together. It's fun and it make the dogs think about me differently.
Thanks for all your replies, this has been very helpful. Also, its made me think that I may well use more visual cues as Molly's training progresses. SwampDonkey - your use of visual cues is very interesting, particularly as my OH has speech restrictions due to a laryngectomy and this would help him to communicate with Molly more easily. We have always used hand signals for the sit, simply because it became a habit when we had BJ.
We teach both. First hand signals, then we attach a word. We practice sometimes with just signals and sometimes just sound, sometimes both together.
We find that Snowie responds much faster and more accurately to hand signals than to words. I presume because it must be quite difficult for a dog to understand English. I have a colleague whose wife is deaf. She "spoke" to her dog in American sign language, and the dog knew several words -- specific words like "bone" for example. That dog is subsequently deceased and the new dog isn't picking up the sign language as easily -- my colleague thinks the previous dog was smarter than the new dog. We use "off" for off anything -- off people, off furniture. We also taught him "sit" was the best thing he could possibly do, an alternative to jumping on people -- this has helped hugely because he assumes he must sit if he's going to get any attention when he meets someone. We use "down" for lie down -- although I've never liked "down", don't like the harsh sound of the word for such a nice thing such as having a lie down on your bed, but that is the word we learned at dog school. I find "down" is very useful -- I was at the optometrist and I wanted Snowie to lie down while I was having my glasses fitted, and a simple "down" did the trick and kept him there until the appointment was done (we had done a long walk before, so he was tired -- that helped!).
