[Sweetums]

No matter what we did, pulling the treat away etc. our little girl did not get the idea. Even the teacher in our class gave up trying.

Then at home, I hit on a solution. I had her sit on the floor in front of me while I kneeled, then as I said "dooowwwwn" I bent over her with my upper body and basically by just using my upper body to "invade" her head space, she just naturally went into the down position. Once she did it, I gave her a treat with lots of enthusiastic "atta girl/that's my good girl!" Then we repeated it. After a couple of repeats, I was able to say "down" holding the treat down on the floor. She got so good at it, that all I had to do was hold the treat down on the floor and she would just flop right down into position before I even said "down." In fact, I think she looks for our hand movements and responds to them much faster than the verbal command.