I'm working with Greta on extending the sit command. We've been using markers with rewards and utilize 'yes' for immediate and 'good' for sustaining actions. Also 'nope' as a negative marker.

I can walk around her and a small distance away and she will hold her sit. This morning I tried sitting down in a patio chair a few feet away and she immediately went into a down. I told her 'nope' and tried it a second and third time with the same results. Apparently when we phased out the body language of the down (my leaning forward slightly was the last part), she's still queing in on that and thinking that I'm telling her to down.

Where did I mess up?? or is this fairly common and I just need to keep trying? I'm thinking that I might still unconsciously lean forward when giving her the down command and that I need to back up and work on down, focusing on holding myself completely still (bad human training ).

Hope everyone is having a nice week- thanks for any suggestions or shared experiences!

Did you use hand gestures when you taught the down?

"Possibly" when your going into YOUR sitting position the dog is responding to your body language.

Also, did you teach the down from the dog's sit position?

Bad habit that is very common because the dog will then anticipate the next move and down without a command.

Get the sit and down command a bit more solid with YOU avoiding the body movements.

Slowly wean them out.

Dogs will respond to body language much easier then verbal commands and when taught together you have to be careful to wean them off the visual.

I guess it's ridiculous to emohazise Bop's opinion as a beginner, but I can tell you I've had the same problem. sometimes we're not aware of our body language. I discovered it, when my husband filmed me. I then had to practice it without dog many times to get rid of ithis, had to restart and now they've got it.

I can now go away quite far, can roll a ball, dance around and jump over them, throw food around them, run towards them and backwards (which is normally a sign for them to com for me, but I'm doing it now without hand movement) , lie and roll on the floor etc. Haha, very proud! Just a matter of being aware what unconcious messages we are giving and of course practice, practice. And generalizing.

One other thing I often did wrong in the beginning: I gave a body sign first and then the verbal command. This makes the dog follow the gesture and not any more listen well to the verbal command. We should make it the other way round. Don't know if this applies to you too. Just in case.

I think what you describe is very common with a young dog. Once we feel they know a particular command, then we can start to very slowly add distance, duration, and distractions. (You sitting in that chair was both distance and distraction.) We never want to add more than one of those things at the same time -- until you feel the dog is solid at each step, then of course you will gradually start proofing by doing two or three of those things at once.

Just thinking about what I might do in your situation, what if you have Greta come with you to the chair, you sit down first with her facing you, then you ask her to sit. (If she's close enough to your knees, she won't be in a position to be able to lie down.) When she's comfortable doing that, then move the chair back just a little at a time. Then you can start to ask her to sit before you do.

For me, anytime I run into an issue with a dog not understanding what I want, I return to the simplest, easiest version of what it is I'm asking and work on that before making it a bit more challenging, step by step. With each step, if she seems confused, go back half a step until she understands, then try that step ahead again.

All good comments! Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions-

Filming you and your dog as Christina mentioned is an excellent way to watch your own mistakes.

Someone can stand there and tell you what your doing wrong but it will make a lot more sense when you actually see it yourself.

Sorry, Carolyn, I think I was inexact, when I described, what I can do with my dogs while in a stay. I of course could not produce all of those maneuvers together. I had first for ex. to train a down with walking around the dog and all the other maneuvers I enumerated rseparately until they really understood it.

Yes. Bob, filming is at least for me the best way to get aware of mistakes. I learned this in interactive courses, where we had to upload vids. There I saw with some surprise for ex. how awful my timing with the release marker was. Or with the sound once ok, once oookay.... an awful singsong. For the dog probably each time another word.