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Hi! I'm Captain Ray Varner with the Page Police Department for expertvillage.com. What I want
to do today is the down position with a new dog. Most people when they train the down
position do a corrective measure to make the dog go into the down position. The dog doesn't
know the down position and you start with a correction, then you're starting off on
the wrong foot all together. If you tell a little kid that he's going to take an algebra
test and he's only 5 years old, how can you correct him for that if he doesn't know what
you're teaching. So what we want to do is we want to physically show you how to do it.
With the dog's sitting here in the heel position and we say down. He says I don't know and
he's just looking around. What we want to do is we want to take the leash and put it
on the small of his back. Then we want to say down and we want to swoop both legs so
he's like this, and then we place him in the down position. What we want to do is have
my hand on his back and holding him here and say, "Down, good boy, down." We emphasize
the fact that this is the down position. Then after we get him stable then we stand up.
We say good boy and then we say stay, and now he's in the down position. As you can
see from his face, he's learning the down position. You can see from his face, there
was no negative here; it's a conditioning mode. We want him down there and this is where
he's supposed to be. We want him parallel with you; you want him comfortable. Then I
come back up and I hold it; I hold the leash. Then you can praise him. Remember anything
from the heel position is physical praise. So I can actually come down and pet him and
praise and say, "Good boy, you did a good job." This is the down position. You want
to swoop the leg, take it off, swoop the leg, and then push him straight down. If you have
to you can put your forearm on his back and bend down to help you push him down. If he
rolls over, then bring him back to the heel position, praise him and start over. If he
comes back up here and he broke the position, then instead of jerking him down when he doesn't
know what's going on, you say, "No, down." This is the hand command and you swoop the
leg so he's like that and then put him in the down position and then say, "Good boy,
stay." Then praise him. Good boy.