Does anyone know how I can get Barley to sit back up after he has been given the down instruction particularly if at a any distance apart. He is great at the 'sit' 'down' 'stand' 'down' instructions whilst you are standing in front of him and you are using a lure for the 'stand' instruction!! Any ideas please?
I am about to embark on this with Coco. I will try small increases in distance. You will need to have faded out the lure for standing if you want that at a distance - not sure we're there yet, but I will work on a sit from a down. I suppose you could use hand signals if you already have them - winder if Coco will remember his hand signals..
You need a different cue from sit - mine is sit up (it sort of sounds like siddup ). You can clicker train it quite precisely, by getting the dog to keep his back legs in the correct position and just move his front legs up and down - if you search on kikopup, there is a video showing you how to do that. I couldn't be bothered though, so just held a treat over his head and added a cue to the movement of his front legs. I then faded the treat, and faded the hand, then added distance. I ended up with a really energetic mini jump to move from a down to a sit. I quite like it. This is fading out over time though and he is more likely to miss out the energetic little jump these days. pheasant by julieandcharlie julieandcharlie, on Flickr
I love Charlie's hop-up, what a flourish! Why do we need a different command from a regular "sit"? Our trainer is fond of using the bare minimum number of commands, and Coco will happily go from "down" to "sit" at close quarters. Have I set him up ta fail something at some point? It shouldn't be difficult to change if I need to.
The action for the dog between sit and sit up is completely different. Different muscles are involved, and it doesn't feel the same to the dog at all. I suppose you could do it with the same cue, it just feels better to me to have different cues for two things that I don't think the dog will see as the same.
mmmm.....thinking about it....it doesn't matter to me that I have two cues because I have a 'wait' cue that I add to a position. I can see others might want sit for both actions if it has duration. I should think that's fine so long as the dog doesn't start standing to then sit or anything like that. Perhaps others that use the same cue could comment.
I'm a bit lackadaisical with my sit up because I very rarely do it, so I'm not the best person to ask, but I started the sit up in exactly the same way as I did the sit down, with a lure which I quickly faded into the hand signal. It turns out that the hand signal is the same, because it started from the same lure movement - that is, it's an open palm, facing upwards and moving slightly up. I've not introduced a verbal cue for the sit up, though. If I did, I don't really see the issue with using the same cue, even though it's a different movement pattern. After all, my dogs cope with having one "heel" cue which means two different things; either walk by my side if I'm moving, or sit by my side if I'm not moving.
Juno has a "Sit" to sit down and from a down position I use "Up sit" with a handsignal going from horizontal to vertical with palm facing her.
Hattie & Charlie have "sit" for a sit and from a down I have the same "sit" but with a handsignal the same as @MaccieD, which is different to everyone else works for us!
Now I know why Dexter springs forward on his sit from the down position. He uses his back legs. Now I know why, I'll work on this.
I just saw it as two completely different things - and I suppose I was copying the trainers I'd watched, who also use different cues for these. In my mind for heel you are marking the position relative to you, in sit and up (sit) you are marking a completely different set of muscle movements, so it just seemed logical to call two completely different things by different cues. Perhaps because the trainers were training them all in a sequence different cues for the different movements make sense.
Yes - we use the command 'upsit' and an upward hand movement, luring with a treat at first. I do 'doggy press ups' with Twiglet - sit, down, upsit, stand, wait, sit, repeat. We do it with hand signals only and with words only (so that they will do them when hands are full of shopping) .
What does Barley do that's wrong? We trained hand signals before any verbal for all of sit, stand and down so I just went back to the hand signal AND I used the heeling stick in the same way some people use a place board or a mat. Oban learned to sit,down and stay behind the stick, then I introduced distance by ME moving away from the stick and then fading the stick. I use the same signal for sit as I do for sit up, for us sit is a position, not a movement. The hand signals came in handy as for working level Rally we had to do all these at a ten foot distance with only hand signals, no verbal allowed. Yes, we used a lure for stand at first but faded it out very quickly. For some reason Oban understood stand easily while my first girl had a really hard time with it. My biggest problem was the hand sweep to stand while he was heeling and we were moving together had necessarily to be rather different when facing him.
Rectified the sit from the down position by adding a different hand signal. Still have stand to master
I never properly got 'stand' with Gypsy, but my supervisor showed me how - you have the treat in your hand and move it away horizonntally and very slightly up. As soon as the dog stands you keep the hand still and treat. The mistake I made with Gypsy was that I kept my hand moving and she took a step - so never really learned what 'stand' meant. Twiglet has it sorted
Thank you, I keep moving as Dexter sits back down before he's fully stood up if I don't (his back legs still squatting but then takes that step when I move Thinking about it, I don't think I move my hand slightly up, keeping it horizontal. I'll have another try tomorrow, it might be the small breakthrough that I need I'm now picturing what I do, I move my hand up but then arc it back down and horizontal as he begins to rise, that's what is maybe causing him to quickly sit again
Don't exactly remember how we got there as there were a lot of trial & errors but I now use hand signal with my arm held up to my shoulder with clenched fist for the 'sit' position then for a 'down' I lower my arm hand held flat facing ground sharply and he goes 'down' to sit back up I raise my arm in to the first position and he sits back up with a 'hop' flourish, quit cute to see makes me smile anyway!
