How to Teach Your Dog to Lie Down

Along with sit, lie down is a basic command that you should work on teaching your dog as soon as you get them home. Lie down can be necessary for your dog to know in certain situations where you need them settled and relaxed. It’s also a stepping stone for more advanced tricks such as “roll over”. Today, I’m sharing how to teach your dog to lie down in 7 simple steps.

1. Teach Them to “Sit”

“Sit” is the most basic command you can teach your dog and one that most dogs will catch onto quite quickly. If you haven’t already taught your dog to sit, read this blog post to learn that command before moving on to “lie down”.

2. Follow Your Hand

Once your dog has mastered sitting on command, put them in a sit position to teach “lie down”. When your dog is sitting, hold a treat in front of their nose. Drag the treat down from their nose, to their chest, and then down to the floor.

The goal is for your dog to follow the treat (and your hand) until they are in a lying position.

3. Praise and Reward

Praising and rewarding your dog whenever they successfully follow your direction is key to a well trained dog. Each time your dog follows the treat into a lie down position, praise and reward them heavily.

All dogs are different and what might be a high value reward to one might mean nothing to the other. If you know your dog is food motivated, use high value treats as a reward such as cheese or bites of chicken. If your pup isn’t a huge foodie, try something else such as verbal praise, belly rubs, or even a toy.

4. Add a Verbal Cue

When your dog is consistently following your hand into a down position, accompany the hand motion with the phrase “down” or “lie down”. This will help your dog associate the command with not just a hand motion, but a verbal cue as well. 

Practice this several times and slowly take the hand motion away altogether, just leaving the verbal cue. Your dog should start to associate lying down with the phrase “down” rather than the hand motion. 

5. Continue to Praise and Reward

Even though your dog is now lying down with a verbal cue and not a treat, it’s still important to reward and praise them for following the command once they are lying down. Each time you tell your dog “down” and they lie down, reward and praise heavily.

6. Extended Down Stay

Being able to lie down on command is important, but getting your dog to stay in that position for an extended period of time is even more beneficial. 

Once your dog is consistently lying down on command, increase the amount of time they’ll stay down by giving them treats periodically as they’re lying down. Start by giving a treat every 5-10 seconds and gradually increase that until they are staying down for minutes at a time.

7. Release

The key to an extended down stay is a release cue. If your dog is willing to lie down for minutes at a time, teach them a release cue such as “release”, “okay”, or “up” to let them know they can move from their down position.

Always remember to give plenty of rewards and praise when teaching each new cue!