6. DownStay

6. DOWNSTAY

LEVEL TWO

Dog Downs and stays while partner walks 20’ away and back. Partner may give extra cues while away. An official “return” is not required.

DISCUSSION: Lots of new concepts in Level Two! The DownStay is the first (and easiest) of the duration behaviours. The glory of clicker dogs is that they offer behaviours. This makes it (comparatively) very easy to get new behaviours. The frustrating thing about clicker dogs is that they offer behaviours. This can make it very difficult to get them to understand duration behaviours like Stays, holding a dumbell, and Watch. And how annoying is the instructor chanting "Click for a longer stay!" while your dog is bopping up and down, thinking of 101 things to do with your shoe?

EASY BEGINNINGS: You have the foundation behaviour. Your dog downs when you ask her to. If she is a relatively slow dog, she may Down and remain in position long enough for you to, in fact, click for a longer stay. Click for one second, for two seconds, for three seconds, etc. When you've got her up to ten seconds, go back down to two seconds and start gradually moving away from her and back to her. Click when you're directly beside her, in front of her, one step away, one step to the right, one to the left, have your back to her. Play with it until she's really solid and you can walk 20' away and back.
Chances are, though, that if you ask her to lie down and leave her there for one second, she's going to be up already trying out a Sit or a trick, thinking that if you were indeed asking for a Down, you would have clicked by now! Must be something else! What could it be?

The easiest solution to the volunteer Puppy Pushups problem (aside from putting her down and sitting on her) is a variation of Alex Kurland's 300 Peck Heeling. Ask her to lie down and click. Give her the treat while she's still down – yes, you have to be fast. Yes, you have to be ready. Yes, shove each treat right into her mouth before she has a chance to get up, and click the next Down while she's still swallowing the last treat. X10. The eleventh time, count to ONE before you click. If she didn't stay down, repeat the 10 Rapid Fire click/treat and then try counting to ONE again. If she stays down for that one second, great. Give her the treat and do another 5 Rapid Fire. Then don't click for a count of TWO. If she gets up, do another 10 Rapid Fire, then hold for ONE again. If she stays down, do another 5 Rapid Fire.

So far we've just been telling her we're paying for Downs, not for guessing. Now we're going to start explaining the DownStay. When she'll hold it for a count of two, start this sequence: Ask her to Down. Count to ONE. Click and give her the treat IN THE DOWN POSITION. If she gets up, start again and be faster next time. If she doesn't get up, count to TWO, click and give her the treat in the down position. If she doesn't get up, count to THREE, click and give her the treat in the down position. Then four, then five, and so on. Every time she breaks before you click, ask her to Down and start the count over again from ONE.

What we tend to want to do with Stays is have the dog stay until she breaks, then we fix it and have her stay until she breaks again. This is a pretty extreme form of lumping, and EXTREMELY common. The glory of the method I've described to you is that it forces you to reward the dog for doing the job right, and it forces you to very slowly approach her threshold of doing it right. So if she's able to Stay for 10 seconds, you've just rewarded her 10 times in a row for doing it right (1 second, 2 secs, 3 secs, etc up to 10). Then she hits ten seconds and makes a mistake. Instead of having her Stay for another ten seconds and make another mistake, you hove gone back to 1 second, 2 secs, etc and rewarded her for doing it right another 10 times. Maybe the third or fourth time she gets to 10, she'll have enough rewards under her belt to risk giving you 11 seconds right. EE HAH!

It's interesting to see what limits different dogs put on their behaviour. There are frequently plateaus in Stays. The dog might need a lot of work at 10 seconds, then sail right through to 48 seconds, spend a couple of sessions working to get through that, then be fine until she hits 2 minutes 15 seconds. Have faith, though. If you're going back and explaining what you're paying for back where it's cheap and easy for her to do it, and if you're slowly approaching her threshold each time, she will move her threshold further and further along.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

SHE STILL BOPS UP TOO FAST! I'VE RAPIDFIRED UNTIL I'M PURPLE! OK, ask for TWO Downs before you click. Down (up) DownClick. Down (up) DownClick. Ailsby's Principle of Laziness says that the "up" between the Downs will get shallower and shallower until finally she asks you if she could just stay down and wait for the click. Gee, um, yeah, OK… If you ask for two Downs X30 and she's still too fast for you, go to THREE Downs before you click. Somewhere in here she's going to get tired of bopping up again.

SHE GETS UP WHEN I CLICK! This, as Bill Gates is reputed to have said, is not a bug, it's a feature. The click ends the behaviour. When you click, she's ALREADY done what you're paying for, so getting up is her option.

Most of the information the dog gets about her behaviour is coming from the clicker. What she's doing when she hears the click is what she's getting paid for. A little bit of the information, though, is coming from the food. What she's doing when she gets the food has a LITTLE bit to do with what she's getting paid for. This is obvious when you think about retrieving. I can click the dog a hundred times for going out and almost picking up her dumbell, and she'll keep going out and almost picking up her dumbell. She won't stay with me and stare at my hand, even though that's where the food is coming from. At the same time, you KNOW her Front is going to start drifting to my right if I keep delivering the food from my right hand. A LOT of the information is telling her to go get the dumbell. A LITTLE bit of information is telling her to head for my right hand.

Now to the Down. When I'm teaching the dog to lie down, I want to give her lots of opportunity to offer me Downs, so when I click the Down, I toss the treat a bit away from her so she has to get up to get it, thus putting her in a good position to offer me another Down. But now we're working on the DownSTAY. If she's a slow-ish dog or has figured out that she might as well stay down, fine, continue with what you were doing. BUT if she's a faster dog or hasn't made the connection yet, you want all the help you can get, so you'll be clicking AND feeding with her still in the down position. Fast, fast, fast, so she doesn't have time to get up. If she DOES get up after you click, that's REALLY alright. If she doesn't do it all the time, you can just ask for the Down again and continue your count from where you left off (she got up when you clicked at 8, so next time you'll be counting to 9). IF she's jumping up all the time, try starting back at the one-count every time.

WE'RE UP TO THREE MINUTES AND I'M SO BORED WITH INCREASING ONE SECOND AT A TIME I COULD SCREAM! OK, OK, dogs don't get bored, but trainers do. Up in this range, you can increase your count by five or ten seconds at a time. If she continues to do well, keep going. If the behaviour starts to fall apart, you went too fast, go back to 1 second increases until she's doing it right again.

ADDING A CUE: When your DownStay has reached ten seconds, you can start adding a cue. My voice cue is "Stay". My hand signal is a thumbs-up fist, but a more common one is simply an open palm facing the dog. I don't know of any sport which requires a single cue for Stay, so you might as well use both.

Some people divide the Stay into "Stay", meaning stay there until I come back and get you, and "Wait", meaning I'm going to call you or tell you to start an agility course or something. In my opinion, a more important differentiation to make would be "Stay" meaning stay until I tell you to do something different, whether I'm beside you or halfway across the yard., and "Wait" meaning put your butt down over there and leave It there until I tell you something different. What's the difference? Stay would be in the same PLACE, in the same POSITION – a DownStay. Wait would be Go To Mat, or table training. In this case, I don't care what position the dog is in, she can stand up, lie on her back or juggle her dog tags as long as she stays in PLACE. Mull these over, you've got some time. My PLACE cues are "Hit the rack", meaning Go To Mat, whether the mat is a chair or a table or a couch or my jacket, and "Go lie down" which means I don't care where you go or even if you stay there, but get out of my face.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: Try not to hold your breath while practicing Stays. Move in different directions away from the dog. Contrive to be in different positions when it's time to click. Left of her, right of her, behind a chair, sitting on a chair, squatting down, clapping your hands, singing, spinning, stamping your feet. Trip occasionally as you leave her and return to her. At this level you can just arrive back at her side, but you can start getting her staying while you walk around her as well.

LEVEL THREE

Dog Downs and stays while the handler walks 20’ out, stays for one minute and comes back. One cue is allowed for the Down, and two cues for the Stay. There will be one mild distraction.

DISCUSSION: Don't use those extra Stay cues if you can help it. We'll be working a lot on duration in Level Three, in many different behaviours. If the dog is having trouble with the time, try working ALL your duration behaviours up at the same time – work SitStay up to 10 seconds, work DownStay up to 10 seconds, work Watch and Zen up to 10 seconds, then take each of them to 15 seconds, and so on.

EASY BEGINNINGS: Continue to use your "300 Peck" Stay as you did in Level 2. It doesn't matter whether you work up your distance first, and then your time, or the other way around, but try not to work them both at once. Get your time up to 20 seconds, then drop it to 10 seconds and increase your distance by a few feet. Then increase your time to 30 seconds, drop it to 20 seconds and increase your distance again. You can increase your time by 1-second intervals, or by 5-second intervals, but if you choose the faster route, be very sure to cut it back to shorter intervals if you start to lose the behaviour.
Add your distraction when you've got a solid duration and distance – maybe 45 seconds and 15 feet. Since you're making the behaviour more difficult by adding the distraction, make the rest of it easier – cut back to 10 seconds and 4 feet, for instance. Click when the dog sees or hears the distraction and doesn't move. Watch for decisions, when the dog notices the distraction, thinks about moving and doesn't. Whether your count was ready for a click or not, if you see a decision happen, click it!

PROBLEM SOLVING:

SHE PUTS HER HEAD UP AND DOWN! That's OK. She can wag her tail, too. She can look around, yawn, fleabite her wrists. What she CAN'T do is raise her elbows off the floor, raise her hocks off the floor, or roll from side to side. Yes, I know that rolling from side to side is acceptable in obedience trials, but let's not tell her that, shall we? Let's make the explanation as simple as possible: pick a position, hit that position, hang on to that position.

I WANT A SPECIFIC DOWN – ONE HIP OVER, ONE FRONT PAW TUCKED! For this you have two choices. You can accept (for now) the Down she offers you, and use it to start working duration and distance, and teach her the competition Down you want, with a different voice cue, in the meantime; OR you can teach her the Down you want right away, wait until she's really doing a good job of it, and then start working on your Stay.

ADDING A CUE: You stopped using your Stay cue when you began making the behaviour more difficult. When you're up to being tested, add your Stay cue in again. The two cues allowed in the test are a voice cue and a hand signal, both given at the same time.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: Use as many different distractions as you can. One of my favourites is "Stay Zen" – when she's good at Zen AND good at Stay, I put treats on the floor near her while she's doing Stays. Pulltoys are a good distraction. Other dogs, other people, open doors, food dishes, squeaky toys, tennis balls – use your imagination! When you make it harder, make it simpler – but you know that already, right?

LEVEL FOUR

Dog Downs and Stays for 3 minutes while the handler walks 40’ away, turns and faces the dog, and makes a formal Return. There will be two distractions.

DISCUSSION: Four things to work on here – more distance, more time, another distraction, and walking around behind the dog to get back into Heel position.

EASY BEGINNINGS: Distance and time work up alternately as you did before: build time to 90 seconds at 20', then cut back to 60 seconds and start increasing your distance. When you've got 60 seconds at 30 feet, cut back to 20 feet and gradually increase your time to 2 minutes, and so on, until you've reached the required 3 minutes and 40'.

You'll need extra time to throw in another distraction, so make the initial distance less and make the distractions lighter. Build up the distance again gradually as you make the distractions more appealing. Remember to watch for and click the correct decisions the dog makes about staying instead of galloping off.
The formal Return in obedience competition is the same for the SitStay, DownStay, and StandStay at all levels. With the dog in a Stay, you walk toward her, go to your right to get behind her, and come up into heel position with her on your left. You've spent a great deal of time now rewarding the dog for keeping her eyes on you. It's unlikely she's going to let you "escape" around behind her without pivoting to watch you go around, so try this: start with a SitStay. Stand in front of her, about 3' away from her. Step to your left, click when she hasn't yet moved a foot. Start again. Step to your right, click when she hasn't yet moved a foot. When she understands that, take two steps to the left or right. This is a 300-Peck opportunity. Work to see how far you can get to the left or right without her moving a front foot. When she fails, cut back to an easy distance and start again. Take this up to about 10' to either side, then start a slightly different explanation. From 2' in front of her, start stepping to the side AND towards her tail. One diagonal step to the right, click and return to the front. One diagonal step to the left, click and return to the front. Then two steps, then three steps. Again, when she fails, go back to the beginning and explain again that the object is for her to keep her front feet still.

When you've reach the point where you can move to her hip to either side, at some point when you've stepped to her left hip, simply take that one additional step around her tail and come up on her right side. Click anytime in here – click when you're directly behind her and she hasn't moved a foot. Click when you've come around and you're at her right hip. Click when you've come around and are stepping into heel position. And finally, click when you can walk around her and stand in heel position for a few seconds without her moving. (By the way, you KNOW that each of those clicks is followed immediately by a treat, right? And each of those clicks is a release, if she chooses to be released.)

Now let's put the whole thing together. Put her in a SitStay and go out to 3' in front of her. Turn and face her. Put a treat in your LEFT hand. Move forward and to your right. Give her the treat as you pass her (withOUT clicking, this isn't a release) to remind her that she's doing the right thing. Walk around behind her and come up into heel position. Count to 5 before you release her.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

HEY WAIT A MINUTE, THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE DOWNSTAY! Yeah, I know, but in the SitStay it's easier to reach her mouth without her moving, so I start teaching the formal return with that. Once she's got the formal return for the SitStay, you can easily add it to the DownStay, and without so much bending on your part. Just run through the whole thing from scratch with her in a DownStay. It won't take nearly as long as the first explanation did.

ADDING A CUE: As usual, you stopped using the Stay cue when you started explaining the new and more difficult parts of the exercise, but once she's steady with you going around her, you can start using it again.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: Try returning to your left, coming up on her with her in heel position on your RIGHT side. Try making BIG circles around her. Try making really tight crowded circles around her. Try stepping over her. Do your DownStays in different locations. In preparation for Level Five, do some in places where she can still see most but not all of you. Do Stays in high traffic areas (people and dogs, for Heaven's sake, NOT cars and trucks!)

LEVEL FIVE

Dog Downs and stays for one minute with the handler out of sight. Appropriate cues.

DISCUSSION: Out of sight! This is a biggie! Notice that as we raised the difficulty of the behaviour, we significantly lowered the amount of time required. A word of warning: use a mirror, use a hole in the wall, use a snitch – whatever you do, don't click the dog for remaining down with you out of sight unless you're SURE she's actually still down!

LEVEL SIX

Dog performs a full out of sight Down Stay for four minutes. Appropriate cues. This is an optional behaviour.

DISCUSSION: This is the complete obedience Open DownStay – just a little bit shorter. Practise with other dogs in a lineup with yours if at all possible, and don't spend ALL your time entertaining the dog with distractions. Nothing-happening is a factor in the Stays as well as distractions!

LEVEL SEVEN

Dog performs a full out of sight Down Stay for five minutes. Appropriate cues. This is an optional behaviour.

DISCUSSION: Just one more minute up from Level Six, and time for polishing the behaviour.