Mannered and social your password send course lad and 7866 movement of laying down. When trainers consistently the down with poor timing we dogs that go down slower and slower because the dogs the exercise as a down stay. They 't the reward as something they get for quickly dropping to the Successful trainers understand that the act of going down and duration the down exercises are two independent exercises which are trained separately with different words. The act of dropping to the is marked with a YES. The act of a down-stay is encouraged with the duration command GOOD. when it's done correctly and the dogs realize that the trigger to get the reward the down exercises is to get his belly on the you dogs drop like a stone. We talk about extending the down-stay later when we discuss adding duration to a behavior with the word Good. I have already mentioned that it is critical to never move the hand or arm that delivers the reward until after we say YES. I want to revisit that issue now you understand why this is important. Dogs are visual animals. While they watch you all the time they 't naturally listen to the words that come out of our mouth. The fact is 't 't understand most of what we say. Your dog always react to physical cues over verbal cues. When trainers give the verbal cue and physical cue at the same time the dog always follow the physical cue. This means when you the exercise and move the arm at the same time the movement of the arm is the cue your dog is following and not your verbal cue. This concept was discovered by Pavlov a time ago. He kept his dogs cages and when it came time to feed a would ring followed by food dropping into food bowls. Pavlov noticed that his dogs would start to salivate when they heard the He then did some experiments. He would ring the while the dogs were eating. Those dogs never salivated to the sound of a The meant nothing to them. The moral of this story is exercise. Unfortunately it's not natural for people to have a pause between the YES and giving the food reward. Almost every new marker trainer reaches for food at the same instant that they say YES. They need to learn the skill of adding a pause between the and the movement of the reward hand. This is a very simple concept to understand and a very difficult discipline to learn. Those trainers who approach this as a learned skill get quicker results. To improve your timing video tape your training sessions and then study your work. This is a great way to gauge your work. I always used to say that training sessions are best kept to very short increments of time 2 or 3 minutes. with marker training, where dogs are engaged with their handler, training sessions can be longer. How depends on the dog, the motivation of the dog and the difficulty of what's being trained. When training is fun, the reward is high enough value and the dog is not tired the time can be extended. It really comes down to watching your dog and recognizing his concentration levels. Different dogs have different levels of concentration. As dogs gain drive their concentration increase. To learn what is best for your dog start out by only putting 20 treats your treat bag. When those treats are gone the session is over. When doubt it is always better to leave a session with your dog wanting more. times new trainers need get into the work they need the signal of empty bait bag to remind them that they need to stop. As they gain experience the work this won't need to be issue. They learn to end a session on a positive high note. There be times during training where a reward needs to be delivered to a specific spot There are also times when the delivery of the reward needs to be done a manner that turns the delivery into what friend calls a mini-event. To become effective marker trainer you must not only master the of timing but also the of where and how to deliver the rewards. New trainers often underestimate how important delivery and placement of the reward is to the learning process. Correct placement of a reward can result new behaviors being learned very quickly. The importance of reward placement the learning phase of marker training be best explained with example. the first steps of the hand touch exercise we often the dog when he looks at the hand we want him to touch. The correct place to reward the dog is at that hand