Hi I sm fairly new to the forum and this is my first dof. My puppy , Alfie, is now 11 weeks and i am working on teaching the down command. I am however struggling to get him to go down on command without first sitting and then luring him down. I think i may have got stuck using a lure. Any tips would be greatly appreciated . Thank you
2 options. The best IMO is if you have stairs. Put pup on top flight and you just below. Hold a hunk of raw meat in your hand and lure him to down position. Up to sit then down just moving your hand under his nose while you say the command. If too excited put him at heel position (seated), then say the command as you put your foot on the leash to force him down.
11 weeks? He's only 11 weeks old? You didn't mean months? I don't know if I should comment at all, you're miles and miles and miles ahead of where we were at 11 weeks. FWIW we slowly transitioned the lure to a hand signal and then to a verbal command. Our trainer said when the hand signal was heeded so reliably we'd bet $50 on puppy doing it then to start using the verbal DOWN with the hand till we transitioned from no had to just verbal. Same for SIT. Slow and steady wins the race. LOL, that's $50 Canadian, you'll have to convert to what your wager will be.
I would lure with food but don't see the need to use a staircase. Move your hand with a treat in your fist towards the floor, keep your fist closed till your puppy lies down, then say 'good' or 'yes' or use a clicker and give the reward. I found Molly went into a down more quickly from a sit than a stand at first - she moved on to going straight to a down.
I wold recommend @Joy 's method to teach down. There's no need to use a cue word to begin with just use your hand. Once you have a good response to the hand moving down you can add 'down' if you want a verbal cue to go with the hand signal.
My two were both difficult to get into the down at first. I certainly wouldn't be using any force - the problem with this is that when you try to push on a dog, they instinctively resist against the pressure, so the action they're making as actually the opposite of the one you want. It sounds like you already have him moving into the down position, which is great. This is where I struggled with mine - it's just not a position that came naturally to them. Like everything else, the trick is to not put a verbal cue onto it until they can respond to the step before consistently. So, here's what I did. Starting with luring, sat on the floor with the puppy. A piece of food between two fingers, getting them into position by bringing it from their nose straight to the floor. You've already got that, I think, so I won't cover the many things I tried before to get them there! Once he is doing that confidently, "fake" the food. So, hold your fingers and hand in the same position, but without any food. Make the same movement, but then treat (importantly) from the other hand. Do this a lot. Eventually, you can open your hand a bit, until you have a visual cue - for me, my visual cue for a down is my hand open, palm-down and moving towards the floor. Remember that dogs understand visual cues a lot more readily than verbal ones. You'll need to spend a lot of time at this point getting to the stage where you can stand up in front of your dog, perform the visual cue and expect success. This wills tart off with you kneeling, then onto one knee, then a crouch etc etc. It took a long time with my Willow to get to the point where I could stand straight, with no hunch in my shoulders. Once you've done that, you'll have a strong visual cue, which is great. Then you can add your verbal, just as you would normally. Verbal - visual - behaviour. Then, verbal - pause - if no behaviour, visual - behaviour. Gradually fade the visual cue until the cue is your word. I'd think carefully about what word you use, too. I, personally, use "down" far too often in day-to-day conversation "get down", "settle down" etc etc, so my cue for a down is "floor". I hope this helps!
We use both visual and verbal cues - then, if there's a lot of noise around or for any other reason you can't speak (theatre etc) the dog still knows what you are asking) ...
I find they can be more effective when proofing with a new distraction, too. They're a lot more tuned in to body language than the spoken word.
