Down

I am working on training Venom a few behaviors including "down" which means to lie down.  I started out by luring him down with food.  I try to just do this a few times and then, once the dog can easily follow the lure, I do it with no food in my hand which causes the lure hand to become a hand signal.  I would still click and treat once he is down, he just wasn't following food to lie down.  Luring is fine and actually quite helpful as long as you stop luring as soon as you can.  At this point, I am now adding the verbal cue.  What is happening here is that Venom is "offering" downs.  This means that if we are training he will do downs over and over on his own without being prompted because he has learned that this is something I reinforce for.  So, I get out my treats and clicker and every time I can predict he will lie down I say "down" and then mark (either by saying "yes!" or clicking) right when he lies down and then tossing the treat away so he has to get up to get it.  I toss the treat away because I want to practice many downs and I want to have many downs to reinforce and tossing the food away sets him up to come and lie down again.  Here is a video from our practice today.