When out walking where I live I have noticed several dogs do a "down" and "sit" and sometimes from a short distance when another dog/person approaches them. This seems like a valuable thing to do but how do you teach it? Thanks Helen
Re: Teaching a Down & Sit from a distance Hi Helen, do you mean that the owner is giving a sit or down command to the dog from a distance? Or that the dog is sitting or lying down of its own accord when another dog approaches? Pippa
Re: Teaching a Down & Sit from a distance Interestingly, I am preparing an ebook on teaching the remote sit/stop and have just written a video script on teaching a remote sit whistle command today. There are lots of different approaches to this and the gundog trainers' approach differs somewhat from the traditional obedience trainers' method. There are several obstacles to overcome, the first is to get the dog used to dropping into a sit position whilst he is moving, and the second is to get him doing the same at a distance. My method begins by teaching the dog to drop into a sitting position to whistle whilst walking at heel on the lead. This then progresses to dropping into a sit at a run. Then progressing to off lead (still at heel) Once the dog has this nicely under his belt we move on to dropping to the whistle whilst very close by me. Then I introduce a number of exercises which progress the dog out to further distances using the retrieve and sometimes food, as a reward. The trick is to make the remote sit very rewarding and this is easy to do using retrieves. For dogs that do not retrieve, the dog is often trained to run out to a mat or marker using treats, and sit when it gets there. There are some skills you need to have in place before you start the training You really need to get the dog walking properly at heel and have an excellent sit/stay over 50 yards and several minutes before you begin. Once the dog walks nicely to heel on and off the lead, and will sit/stay whilst you walk 50 yards away from him, then you are good to go. Teaching the dog to lie down can be done in the same way, and some people think that the dog is less likely to move in this position. We don't usually use a 'down' with gundogs because the dog needs to see what is going on . It is a lot of fun to teach a remote sit/stop, and very pleasing to watch a dog drop gracefully into a sit from a gallop at 50 yards from his handler. Once the gundog is fully trained we often allow the sit to become a simple 'stop' where the dog just stands quite still until he is given directions to do something else. Pippa
Re: Teaching a Down & Sit from a distance Thank you Pippa, we obviously have a "little" more work to do before we start this exercise, but it does look fun - maybe one day!! Helen
Re: Teaching a Down & Sit from a distance Hi Helen Maybe because of where we live it's far more important for me to be able to "stop" my dog than make her walk to heal so I approach the stop - or sit at a distance, we don't use the lie down - slightly diffently from Pippa. I start by teaching the dog to sit directly in front of me, a nice dish of tea is helpful, lift the dish and the dog automatically (usually but not always) will drop to sit to pick her head up; give the sit command as the dog is lowering into sit, no praise needed dinner is sufficient, but do 'release', my release is "good girls, all yours" for food, or "good girls, off you go" when we're out and I'm letting 'off' for a run and some free time. Back to the plan, the action of lifting the dish also introduces the body language of hand raised above head meaning sit. We then progress to sit without the food but still the word and signal. From there I move to just the signal. When I'm sure (well 99%) that she knows what I'm asking I'll start with both command, "Sit" and signal when she's not next to me but is looking at me, in a safe place, I usually start in the house, across the kitchen for example, and progress to the garden before venturing out and about. At some point, I can't specify when because it varies with each dog, I swap the verbal command for my stop whistle which is an acme thunderer, the type used by referees, it sounds very diffently from a horn recall whistle. Using both whistle and signal the dog should still 'drop' on command. The final stage is to leave out the hand signal and use just the whistle. My girls have taught themselves, I taught Juno and the others have learnt by example with some reinforcement, that the first stop pip means 'stop' look at the boss for the next instruction, a second pip means sit down and don't move, a really long blast on the stop means an absolute stop dead wherever you are no matter what you're doing. This is the really important one for us, with so much free roaming stock I need to be able to stop the girls and make them stay there until I get to them, or call them in, especially if the sheep are being moved, checked or whatever. For this reason I put in much more work on stop than heal in the early days. My proofing for sit and stop is that the dog should do it no matter where you are or whether you're sitting, standing or even lying down, getting that hand signal accepted when you're horizontal rather than vertical can be challenging but it's worth it! I start the basic command and signal training with pups early on, I know Charlie is a bit older but I'm sure adding the hand signal into his sit training won't cause too much confusion. I use stay which I know Pippa doesn't and my sit command has a different meaning from hers so if you're following her recall training, or any other long term training strategy, do double check this isn't going to confuse things later on. Consistency in training is vital. But if you can make Charlie sit then I don't see any reason why he won't stop, or sit at a distance, with some work of course. Good luck with it all it sounds as if you're making great progress with him. Kerryn
Re: Teaching a Down & Sit from a distance Thanks Kerryn, sounds complex but I am sure in time Charlie can be taught this valuable command. One problem I use 2 pips for his recall whistle training. I think with all he is trying to learn at the moment we may leave this for a little while as he is not walking properly to heel yet so some way to go, but definately something I would love to teach him. Helen
Re: Teaching a Down & Sit from a distance It sounds far more complex than it really is and don't forget our dogs are far more intelligent than we give them credit for, I think Charlie proved that in his agility today! With his focus on you it should be quite easy to add in when you're ready. I use double recall pips too, as well as a series of short pips for "seek here, you're close to the retrieve". I do have two very different sounding whistles, the thunderer for stop and a 12 1/2 horn for recall, seek etc. the dogs know the difference.
