Any tips on training? Our 4 month old GSP has learned 'sit', 'stay' (though sometimes he doesn't!) 'shake' 'off' and he's just about house trained. But we don't know to teach him to lay down. How did you train your pupies? Phoebe

Do a search on here on obedience training, I believe there is posts for sit, laydown, stay ect....

thanks

fee fee
hold a treat in your hand.Hold it with your thumb so you can keep your fingers straight ...like a flat hand.Show your dog the treat in your hand then turn your hand facing down and at the same time as giving the command(down is better than laydown...its nice and short) move your hand down to the floor.Your dog should follow...keep the treat on the floor under your hand and the dog will...some may take a while....eventually lay down in order to get as close to the treat as possible.As soon as the dog is in the down reward. The idea of the flat hand is that that will end up as your hand signal for down
Repeat as with any training and it will work
Good luck....hope this makes sense
Archer

We trained maisie to laydown the same way as archer has said, it did'nt take long, OH put her into the position to start with while i told her down and put the treat towards the floor we them praised her loads. You just have to be persistant and keep repeating it over and over again. We learnt her to give paw the same way, i held my hand out and said paw while my OH put her paw in my hand we then gave her a treat and praised her eventually she did it by herself with out OH helping.

i used above method but at first he was reluctant to go down and my trainer advised us to move treat under his chin and down his chest to the floor so he had to go down cos he couldnt see it anymore if you get what i mean he got the hang of it real quick as soon as he realised he got the treat when he went down

If you have a largish dog and cannot get it to lay down then kneel on floor with one knee and have the other as a "bridge".

Entice dog under your leg with a treat and it will have to "lie" down to get under your knee - don't forget to say "down" when your dog is in the correct position

I used the clicker to train my wheaten but you can use it without. Get you dog into the sit position using a treat put you hand on the floor close to the dogs chest and get you dog to lower its head to the floor. Then gradually slide you hand along the floor and your dog will flop into the down position. If you are using the clicker, click and say down as soon as the dog is in the down position. If you are not using the clicker a soon as the dogs chest touches the floor say down then give him the treat. Fee Fee, a good book to get is The Perfect Puppy by Gwen Bailey you can buy it at amazon And it tells you everything about owning a dog, it really good i highly recommend it. We have had five dogs and i still use it all the time. Well done with the training so far.

Sarah xxxx

I lure the down using food between my thumb and forefinger level with the nose and lowering to the floor between the puppy's paws.  As the dog is going down I turn my hand over and let the dog take the food from the flat of my hand.

After three times with food, I remove food from the equation but still use the same shape hand to lure the behaviour and then turn over hand and pop treat in from other hand.

Once the behaviour is fluent, ie the dog is performing the behaviour at least nine times out of ten the luring hand can be shaped into a visual cue and then a verbal cue can be introduced a second or two before the visual cue and then the hand signal faded if necessary.

Duration can be built by delaying the click if you are using a clicker.

It is easier for both the dog and you to get the behaviour reliably first before adding a cue rather than the other way round.

As kerioak says, using your body, legs or a chair etc can encourage the dog to go down with those who are less reluctant.

thanks everyone!