3 Benefits Of Teaching Your Dog To Down/Stay
Why teach your dog to perform a Down/Stay?
It's a great impulse control exercise. It will be a lot harder for your dog to jump up on guests from a Down position. Asking her to Stay until she calms down will allow her to be a polite greeter.
It could be an alternative to undesirable behaviors we experience. We can practice Down/Stays at meal times, while we are cooking, when grabbing a coffee at the local spot.
It provides the foundations for further "relaxation" & "mat work". Asking your dog to Down/Stay after she she’s been excited by something can help her calm down before you continue your walk, for example.
The biggest roadblock our clients encounter while teaching it:
▪️Progressing too fast.
It comes natural to us to want to move onto the next level of difficulty, however, we need to make sure that we have a systematic approach to dog training & measuring our progress accordingly.
Add the 3 "D-s" accordingly (Distance, Duration & Distraction) only when you are getting consistent positive results.
Happy training!