Wondering how to teach your dog to lay down? Stop wondering! After you bring this article to the end, you would have perfected the trick of teaching your dog how to lay down.
Step by step, we will guide you just on that.
Without further ado, let’s get started!
How to Teach Your Dog to Lay Down?
For training your dog to lay down, it would be helpful if your dog is trained on how to sit. But before starting, it is very important to keep a bag of small treats. You will need them for luring your dog to obey your instructions.
A. Training Your Dog to Lay Down With the Treat
- Command your dog to sit down.
- Put a small amount of treat in your hand, and move it closer to his nose.
- Your dog will understand that now it’s time for treat.
- Take some treat and place it close to his nose again. But this time, move your hand a little lower, so your dog has to bend down a little.
Take care of two things in this step. One, don’t move your fist all the way to the ground in the first attempt; your dog will never understand what you want from him.
Two, don’t move your hand too away from him; your dog will stand up to follow your hand instead of bending downwards.
- Take some treat again and this time move the fist a little lower than before; your dog will bend down a little more.
- Repeat this process in such a way that, each time your hand moves a little towards the ground, your dog bends to reach it.
- After several attempts, your dog will understand what you want from him. Next time, when you’d move your fist close to ground, your dog will lie down to eat the treat.
“Perseverance and appreciations are the keys to train a dog.”
B. Training Your Dog to Lay Down Without the Treat
Now that your dog knows that it has to follow your hand with a treat, it’s time to teach him how to do it without a treat.
- Move your fist closer to your dog’s nose; move it down slowly and let your dog follow it.
- When your dog reaches the ground, give him a treat and appreciation.
- As you wouldn’t want to lower down every time you want your dog to lay down, you have to treat them accordingly.
- Move your hand, this time with an open palm, and lower down while your dog is following it. When it reaches the ground, give your dog a treat.
- Every time you repeat this step, decrease your bending and make your dog follow the signal of your palm.
Do it several times until your dog knows that he has to follow your signals.
C. Training Your Dog to Lay Down on the Voice Command “Down”
Now that your dog understands how to follow your hand signals, it’s time to teach him how to respond to the command “down.”
- Show the dog your hand signal and say the word “down”, or any other word that would convey the same meaning to your dog.
- Repeat this step again and again, until your dog gets used to the word “down.”
The process of training your dog to lay down is a progressive process. First use treats, then hand signal, and then your voice command. Remember that your dog doesn’t understand our language. They only respond to those words that are associated with certain actions. And this is how they remember that at this word, they have to do a particular action.
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