I have to brag for a moment, if that's ok. I taught Kodee the "place" command today. In one day!!! We did 2 short training sessions, and by the end of the first one, he was following the command. Then this evening, we did the 2nd training session. About 10 minutes or so after we finished, I straightened his mat out on the floor (he messed it all up playing ball in kitchen), and turned my back. When I turned back around, he was laying down right smack in the middle of his mat just looking at me like "Hey, Mom, where's my reward?" LOL! I am so psyched!!! Leerburg rocks!

He is not only beautiful, but brainy too! Congrats!
I've just ordered a big mat also, I love the idea of having a moveable 'place'.

What DVD, if any do you have?

Your boy has both beauty and brains.

Congrats

Thanks! I am so proud of him. LOL! I have the Leerburg Your Puppy 8 Weeks to 8 Months DVD, the Basic Obedience DVD, the Establishing Pack Structure with the Family Pet DVD (which I haven't yet finished watching), and one or two other Leerburg DVD's that I haven't watched yet. The Leerburg DVD's are really great.

Fuzzy Einstein!

Hi Kori,

That's great, can you describe the training method your using to teach it? Sounds like Kodee is catching on fast. I still need to teach the place command to my dog so I'm really interested in how you are training it.

Thanks,

Thanks, all!

Peggy - I went a little faster on teaching this command I think than Ed shows in his DVD. Kodee already knows the "down", and I didn't give a marker for him when he just put one foot on the sheepskin mat. I started right off marking him ("yes!") when he had all 4 feet on the mat. Then rewarded him and said "Good place!" I did this a few times til he got the idea that standing on the mat meant treats. Kodee is a quick learner, so he started going to the mat on his own and looking at me. I gave him the down command, and he laid down, and I marked ("Yes! Good place!"), and rewarded him. We did this a couple of times (I rewarded him for laying down even if he was only half on the mat. as long as he was down, I rewarded that.) By the end of the first training session, I was only marking him for going to the mat and laying down. Not just for standing on it. This was pretty easy w/him because he has a very solid "down." Then we stopped the training session.

The second session, I laid the mat out, and told him "Place" and pointed to the mat. He immediately knew he was supposed to go lay down on the mat. This session I only rewarded him for being totally on the mat in the down position (didn't reward if he was half on, half off). That's it! He started following the "place" command by the end of the second session.

One thing that I think helped is he knows the "kennel" command - which I point to his crate and say "kennel", so the physical action of me pointing to the mat probably helped him understand. I only pointed a couple of times, then just went to a verbal "place" command.

One of the reasons I'm so excited is that this is the first new command I've taught Kodee in a few weeks, as we were just working on practicing and reinforcing (a LOT) on the commands he already knew. This time, I could see he was looking at me and trying to figure out what I was asking him to do. It was really cool!

Great Job, Congradulations !