Sheepish Puppy

[pitbullmamaliz]

I'm working on getting Inara to "down" and "stay" while I throw her toys. I want her to wait for my permission before racing after it. She's doing pretty well considering this is the first night trying it. But it's so cute - if she breaks her stay before I give permission, I raise my voice and say "young lady!" and she comes skulking back into the room, head down, no toy, looking at me with giant eyes. Then after she's down again, I say "go get it!" and she races off. It's very cute. I think I just love her sheepish look when she messes up.

[Purple]

LOL, Hopscotch and I are working on the same thing tonight!! Gotta love those eyes!

[dogcrazyjen]

We are still trying to just get the down with Tess. She has it with a cookie, but I didn't work it with play drive, and it is a whole different beast! She tries to push to the toy, I hold her forehead, and the rest of her slumps down. It is pretty funny!

[pitbullmamaliz]

I was surprised how quickly Inara learned the down. She was very resistant for the first 2-3 days, but now if she's not sure what I want, she offers that. Even if I ask for sit, she often lies down instead. It's forcing me to go back to practicing "sit" with her and rewarding her before she lies down!

[katiek0417]

One of the things that I did with my little one to teach the sit and the down (then the down with stay before releasing to get a toy) was this:

I made sure my dog did sit EVERY time I told her to. When she did, I started working on the down. Once she had the down reliably, I went from a down, right to a sit, then right back to a down, and so on. So, rather than being released between each one, I made her do them alternatingly. Every time she did one, I would praise her for a "good sitz" or a "good auf" (sorry, her commands are Dutch). I think this allowed her to differentiate between the sit and the down.

To teach the stay, I put her in a down, and told her to "bleiben." Then I took the toy, and dropped it down about a foot from her, counted to 3, then released her. i did this a few times, then counted to 10. After counting to 10, I dropped the toy to be 3 feet from her, and so on. Then 10 feet....

The stay training was definitely more of a test for me (my patience) than for her!!!!

If she got up during any of these times, I snatched the toy up, put her right back where she was, and did it again. It didn't take that long for her to figure it out.