Obedience
How to teach a dog to lie down on cue
“Down” lands elbows on the floor first ask, on grass and pavement, not just the living-room rug.
What “down” actually means
In Proof this is a skill in its own right, because the settled position — the one that lasts through a café visit.
Teach sit first — it is what this one is built on.
The stages
These steps are a draft pending review by a credentialed trainer. They describe standard positive-reinforcement marker training; the app carries the same notice on every session screen.
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Stage 1 — Lured down
Goal: Elbows on the floor following the lure
- From a sit, treat at the nose, draw it slowly straight down to the floor.
- Mark when the elbows land, treat on the floor between the paws.
If it goes wrong
- Rear pops up as the head follows? Mark earlier — pay the head dip first, then shape lower over reps.
- Dog refuses on hard or cold floors? Fair complaint. Train on a mat first, generalise later.
- Small dog folds but won’t drop? Lure under your bent knee or a low stool so crawling under produces the down.
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Stage 2 — On cue
Goal: Down on the word alone from a sit or stand
- Say "down", pause, then signal. Mark and treat on the floor.
- Fade the signal as with sit. Keep sessions short — down is physically bigger than it looks.
If it goes wrong
- Dog sits instead of downing from a stand? Two different pictures for a dog — practice down-from-stand as its own exercise.
How long does it take?
Most foundation skills reach their bar in two to four weeks of short daily sessions. Adolescence can temporarily un-stick anything, which is normal.
Proof does not put a timeline on an individual skill, and neither should anything else — the honest answer depends on the dog in front of you, how often you practise, and where you practise. What it does instead is measure: every session records how many reps landed, so progress is a number rather than a feeling.
Proving it in 3 different places
A behaviour that only works in the kitchen is situational, not trained. Down counts as proven in Proof once it clears the bar above at the top stage in 3 genuinely different contexts:
- Indoors — the quiet room where everything works
- Garden — outdoors, but home turf
- Street — pavements, traffic, passing people
- Park — other dogs, long grass, real distraction
- Somewhere new — a place the dog has never worked before
Proof also expires. Leave a proven skill for two months without asking for it and it returns to the daily plan as a refresher, because that is what actually happens to trained behaviour.