The Only Commands Your Dog Needs To Know

A dog that has truly mastered down has also mastered the ideal calm mindset. Many new dog owners think of down as just another command in their arsenal of fun tricks, among the likes of play dead and hopping up on back legs. But in reality, down is a fantastic impulse control exercise and a wonderful skill for all dogs to truly know. Being able to send your dog into a down reliably means that they will be out of the way and manageable in any public situation, and ready to relax in any environment.

Just like sit, and for the same reasons, down should always have an implied stay attached. When we teach dogs the down at Lugaru K9 Training, the goal is always to refine it from a “physical down,” in which the dog is in the position but not yet relaxed, into a full “mental down” in which the dog perceives the down as a marker that it is time to chill. With a basic understanding of dog body language, it is pretty easy to see when a dog is in a mental down and when they are just going through the motions. When a dog is capable of a mental down in any situation, they’ve achieved what many trainers call calm-on-command.

Having a solid – and most importantly a behavioral – down is a game-changer in pet dogs, and definitely a skill that all dogs should learn early into training!

A dog with solid recall is reliable, safe, and ultimately has access to much more freedom than a dog without. Being able to recall your dog in any situation is priceless in the security and safety it provides both you and your dog.

Many dog owners teach recall early on, but stop once their dog has it “good enough, most of the time.” This is, unfortunately, why a lot of dogs will come when called only until they have something better to do. When they see another dog, a car, a stranger, or any other distraction of particular interest, recall becomes more of a suggestion than a real command. All the safety and security that comes with solid recall no longer exists; and if the command fails when it’s needed the most, does the dog even really have the command?

When we teach recall, we scale dogs with reward-based repetition training into recalling in even high-distraction environments and prepare their owners with an appropriate safety net by remote collar conditioning them. Having lots of practice paired with the means to follow through provides that extra sense of security that allows dogs to have the most freedom possible while giving their owners absolute peace of mind.

Heel is rarely taught, and incredibly valuable. Heels is so much more than not getting your arm yanked out of place by a pulling dog. Heel is as much a mental exercise as a physical one. It means in-step, paying attention, and under control in public. A dog that heels properly can go almost anywhere, because they know where they are supposed to be in almost any situation. Stores, trails, airports, or a neighborhood walk, heel means your dog knows to follow and match you.

While it is listed in this post as a “command,” at Lugaru K9 Training we teach that heel is always implied. It is the deviating from heel that is by command (or, rather, by permission). Therefore, any time our client dogs are leashed, they are by your side and under control until released.

One of the reasons we teach heel instead of “loose-leash walking,” is that heel is, remarkably, easier for dogs to understand. There is a mental boundary that is visibly marked: follow close, but don’t go past the handler’s legs. It can be easily and fairly quickly taught with a mix of leash pressure and reward (usually food), and once it is learned, your dog can go on walks with little to no pressure on the leash at all; that means that teaching heel is actually kinder to the dogs! And just as rewarding is that creating a high-structured walking environment translates much more seamlessly to off-leash work; meaning, once your dog knows the heel position on-leash, they can start scaling their heel to off-leash, too.

Crate training is something with which most dog owners start out strong, and then slowly abandon over time. From wanting the dog to sleep in the bed with them to giving in to separation anxiety and a million reasons in between, many dog owners trick themselves into thinking that crate training is great, just not for them.

But crating when not supervised is valuable for all dogs – even well-behaved ones – for a host of reasons. Dogs can become destructive, even those who don’t have a long history of it. Even happy-go-lucky dogs can get in the way when a landlord or contractor stops by, and they can work themselves up obsessing over the window or the door. Dogs can get into the trash, or find things on the floor that could cause them significant harm; there’s a reason emergency veterinary offices get a spike of activity in the evening, when people come home to find their dogs ill. And dogs absolutely learn to push boundaries when they are repeatedly left alone to their own devices with no supervision whatsoever. Crate training is the safest option for nearly every situation, and also helps maintain your hard efforts in any behavioral dog training you do in other areas.

Place means go to a designated spot, down, and relax. Similar to crate training, place training is all about keeping your dog both under control and involved in your life. The place command is a wonderful way for your dog to be near you while holding to a standard of behavior compatible with that daily life. A dog in place is a dog that isn’t getting into nonsense; no messing with the kids, no scanning the house for dropped crumbs, no sneaking off to pee on the bed post, no running around knocking things over, no fill-in-the-blank. Place is, at its heart, a command that keeps your dog predictable and calm-on-command while not having to be alone in the crate.

Place is great for the practical day-to-day reasons, but it’s also a wonderful daily exercise in impulse control. Impulse control is a skill that most modern dogs lack: the ability to see temptation and choose their new set of standards. Place is a wonderful builder of impulse control because the dog has a task (stay in place) that is constantly being weighed against distractions big and small. From the inner inkling to go sniff around to the cats chasing each other by in a whirlwind, a dog in place is containing impulses regularly while in the place command. This means that, as your dog’s place threshold for distraction and duration increases, that impulse control is building in other areas as well. Don’t be surprised if, as you scale up in place training, you find your dog keener to relax and snub distractions in other areas as well.

So far, we know that in sit and down there is always an implied stay, we know that crate training is key, and we know that place training is priceless both as a mental exercise and as a means to involve your dog in your at-home day-to-day. The thing that all these commands have in common is that your dog is holding them until released. A sit-stay and a down-stay lasts until permission or the next command is given. Crated dogs shouldn’t be barreling out the moment the door opens. And dogs in place should be focusing on relaxation while nothing else is planned.

That is why when we are working with client dogs, we always condition a release word. Just like any command, the release word can be anything you fancy, as long as you’re consistent in the name you choose. Popular release words are “free,” “okay,” and our preference, “break.” While your release word is personal choice, we tend to advise our clients to steer away from “okay,” or any other word that you use regularly in normal day-to-day conversation. Picking a word you use less frequently helps reduce any confusion in your dog, and in doing so helps raise the efficacy of your training.

Dogs need remarkably few words conditioned in order to live a full, balanced life, and none are more valuable on their own than the conditioning to “yes.” Yes is valuable feedback to our dogs that indicate they are on the right track, and in many ways is a “command” in its own right, encouraging more of a given behavior.

At Lugaru K9 Training, we condition yes with food, toys, praise, affection, play, and anything else that the specific dog finds motivating. Having dogs leave with an understanding of what yes is means that they are easier to communicate with and more receptive to verbal cues in general.

There are two main roadblocks that dog owners stumble into when using this feedback with their dogs.

The first is confusion. When giving dogs this feedback, it’s important that that feedback is easy to take in. Doing things like overusing the feedback when it isn’t earned (like saying “good boy!” for doing nothing in particular), coming underprepared to follow through with tangible rewards, and failing to pick one word and stick to it all cause confusion and contribute to the yes-marker losing its meaning.

The second is failing to pair it with a second type of feedback:

In the same way that it’s important to give our dogs feedback on what they’re doing right, it’s similarly important to give our dogs feedback about behaviors that are unwanted. Just like yes, no is most powerful when paired with its opposite. In the same way that you cannot reward away bad behaviors, you also can not correct wanted behaviors and expect them to increase. We call it balanced dog training for the balance of yes and no that create clear communication and reliable results.

We train no with the same mindfulness we teach yes: make it clear, and condition it so that communication becomes better as a result. Dogs leave our training programs able to receive a verbal “no,” and adjust their choices at the moment based on that information.