as I said before, wally was pretty solid with sit when we first brought him home. he wasn’t so good at stay, though, and we certainly weren’t trying down very hard with him since he bit gina’s mom when she tried showing us. I explained to steve that wally wasn’t very receptive to being pushed or pulled, but steve showed us a way to get wally to sit by applying pressure to pressure points right above his hips and how to get him to go down just by pushing him over from a sit.
part of what steve taught is that whenever joe or I give the sit or down command, the “stay” command should just be expected. so when wally goes into a sit or a down, he has to just stay there til we give him the break command. so wally’s got sit-stay down pat. now, the down-stay… that’s a slightly different story.
wally knows what the command means. he’s demonstrated it time and again when steve is actually in the house with us. however, when it’s just the two of us, he hardly ever goes down on the first command. one of my big mistakes was repeating the command a couple of times before enforcing the command (giving him a push into the down). if he knows you’re going to give him a couple of free passes before enforcing it, he’s going to take advantage of it. it’s taking me some practice, but I’m getting better at simply saying the command once. most of the time he doesn’t immediately go down, but I’ve gotten to the point where he just sees me start to bend down to him and he goes down on his own. not perfection… but it’s a start! once he’s in the down, though, he’s really great at staying there until we release him. it’s that initial obedience that he has a little trouble with. again, I’m sure that his home before us never enforced rules or obedience in any way, so in a way, it’s rehabilitation and not necessarily teaching him a new trick. the act of going into his down is more of a psychological exercise than it is anything else.
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