Why is your hand behind her? You should have both hands in front of her while teaching Down. If you haven't tried this already:

* Tell her to Sit, treat.

* Put another treat on the ground in front of her and cover it lightly with a few fingers. She should naturally bend down to get the treat, and if she kind of has to work it from your fingers, she should naturally crouch down. When she's fully down, say "Good Down!" and let her have the treat - or even give her another one as a reward.

Thanks everyone for all the idea's. I guess Missy is not one of the ones that does this command easily. We are still working on it though. Anyway we will keep trying. The reason my hand was in the back was to just encourage her to lower her backend. The only thing she does "naturally" is that she raises her butt everytime her front half goes down :) Maybe it's a genetic thing. :)

Missy went DOWN!!!!!! Finally! We kind of combined a few different ideas. Putting her in a chair helped by limiting her from backing up as much when she did get up from a sit. I realized if I kept my hand lightly on her back after I made her sit, she wasn't trying to follow my hand to look for a treat. Then I'd tell her down and hold the treat on the seat of the chair and then gently pushed down & back on her butt. It helped that the chair was wooden and she "slid" down easily. Once we did it a few times and she finally realized what I wanted her to do she did it on her on with just a slight amount of preasure on her back!!!! I think with just a little more practice she will do it without my hand at all. Thanks again for all the ideas and help! It is truely amazing how smart these dogs are.

:congrats: Sounds like you make a good team!

It help's when you have a good partner. Thanks again for all the help. You guys are great!!!

Great! :D

Zoey learned on a wooden floor, rather than a chair. That slippery business really makes a difference (along with that little push)... ;)

Yay for Missy! :) :thumbup:

It took us a while to teach Sandy how to 'down'. It helped a lot putting one hand on his butt to let him know he should stay down. It worked.

You guys are going to have so much fun training! ;)

I have found the clicker method works great! Just start by noticing him in the down position, then click, and give a treat. Do this a number of times. Then when you click, treat, then say down.... He will eventually understand what it is you want him to do.... It sounds kind of confusing, but it really works well... I have taught mine to sit, down, and roll over, all within about a week... Just google it to try and find clicker training... good luck:animal-pa

What i did with Lienkie is i used to sit on the carpet legs crossed and with my left leg i'll make a tunnel for her to go through, ensure just enough space for her to crawl under. I'd take a snack in my left hand (she is sitting at my right) and put my arm through my leg encouraging her to take the snack. As she comes closer i'd move my arm a bit further away each time. When she's final under my leg she will lay down automatically as my leg pushes her to the ground basically and i will say "down" and give her the snack. I would normally let her come through out the other side and praise her and give her another snack. Try this may work for you. The other thing i used to do is get her to sit. I'd take a snack and hold it to her nose to smell and gradually go down with my hand forcing her to lay down. Keeping my hand very close to her body and she would lay down. The main thing is to not give up and have a lot and i mean a lot of patience with your yorkie. They are small dags with very big hearts and they want to be the boss and not you. I'm glad to say we have no problem in that area anymore. It's just the potty training that the biggest problem at this stage.
Good luck hope it works.

OK, Missy has the "down" part but now how do I go about getting her to roll. Tried moving the treat around to the side of her head but she just jumps up to go for it. I have tried watching some of the video's but they keep stopping and going and it is so annoying. I am not sure what to do about that so does anyone have any helpful hints for the rolling over and/or any ideas for some other tricks to teach her. She now does sit, stand pretty, down, spin. shake, and kiss. I have not done any leash work with her yet. Thanks again for all the help.

Have you checked out this thread yet? http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/tra...-progress.html There's lots of different tricks and tips on how to do them. :)

FYI, Roll is an "intermediate" command. :) It might take her a while to get it. It took forever with Thor. One thing I did was whenever he rolled on his back while he was playing, I'd praise him and give him a treat.

Thanks again for all the help. Have been keeping up with the "tricks in progress" but was hoping there were some other "tricks" to the roll command. But we won't give up. We'll just take it slow and easy. Still working on the crawl too. I have to find something more interesting to crawl for though. Cherrios just aren't it!!