Lake House Series Video 8: Practice With the Emergency Down

Lake House Series Video 8: Practice With the Emergency Down

This is Dr. Carolyn Lincoln with Play to Behave and I’m here at the Cleveland All-Breed Training Club. It’s an AKC club. I’m here with my dog, Rae, she’s two-year-old Australian shepherd. I’m just going to show you the next piece of the emergency down which I mentioned in another video before. If you missed that you can go back and see it here!

Also, I wanted to tell you that on Tuesday mornings at 10:00 if you live in the Cleveland area, and you’re interested in agility, we’re going to be doing some beginning agility during that time. It’ll be sort of a drop in, I just have to clear everything with the club so I’ll let you know, and I’ll let you know the cost and all that. Just ask me if you’re interested.

Now, back to the emergency down. The first piece I told you to teach your dog is to go out, so they go away from you and then you can teach them to sit and up lie down at a distance. I have that with her, and so I’m going to ask her to come to me, and as she’s coming I’m going to ask her to lie down in the process. I want her moving and running, and as she’s coming I’ll ask her to down now.

We did this a long time ago, probably a year ago and she was good at it, but now I really need this for the lake house so I’m going to practice it more often. I did this one session with her on the other live, so you didn’t see that, so she’s a little better now, but she was coming to about maybe two feet from me in lying down. Of course, I want her farther out, I want her to lie down as soon as I say it, but we can’t expect to have the finished behavior immediately. This is just the process, so you’re going to be able to see that.

Right now I’m going to send her out and I’m going to ask her to lie down, if she doesn’t, and then I’m going to call her to me. As she’s coming, I’m going to say down, and I always use the hand signal always, always, always, because they might not be able to hear you wherever they are. As soon as she goes down, tell her, “Good girl”, and she gets rewarded for frisbee. I’m not using treats today, I’m just using a frisbee, this is her favorite thing and she’ll do it for that. As time goes on I’ll have her farther and farther away.

I’m going to go behind me right now, I’m going to ask her to go out, I’m going to call her to me, ask her to down, and then reward her with a frisbee. “Ready? Lie down. Free. Down. Yes, good girl.” That’s pretty good because she was about two feet away. What I did wrong is I threw the frisbee really high, and I don’t want to do that because they can get hurt coming down and she actually did last week.

“Low. Out. Down. Free. Down. Good girl.” If you saw before, I only did about 10 repetitions and she was coming much closer, now she’s farther. It doesn’t take that long to teach your dog this.

“Go. Good girl. Lie down.” Notice, always use a hand signal. “Free. Down. Good girl. Go get it.” I have a release word which is free. I could use the word come and have her come to me, because I didn’t actually asked her to stay. “Down. Free. Down. Good girl.”

So you see, over time she’s going to get better and better at this, and no matter what she’s doing she should lie down. “Rae, come, lie down, stay.” I’ll be able to use this out at the lake house, but of course I have to practice it out there too out in the grass. I’ve done a little bit of that, but not a whole lot.

How long did that take me? I mean this video is taking a little time, but actual training that I just did takes almost no time at all, so you can definitely fit this into your day. Doing it a couple times a day, you’d be amazed at how quickly they learn and how fast they change.

This is Rae, and she’s signing off. I’m Dr Carolyn Lincoln with Play to Behave. Again, I’m at the Cleveland All-Breed Training Club. It’s an AKC Club. I teach here, I actually do it on a volunteer basis. We have lots of great classes, so if you are interested whether it’s tracking, obedience, rally, agility, whatever, the AKC club in your area, if not this one, should have a lot of variety and you might want to get involved.

If you’re interested in a class coming up, let me know for the summer. Okay, signing off, have a great day.