5 Steps to Teach Your Dog to Settle
Your dog can’t relax; now you can’t either. End this uncomfortable cycle and find relief for both of you by teaching your dog how to settle.
Try Our Easy-To-Implement Approach to Teaching Your Dog to Settle
Settling is one of the most useful, important, and sought-after behaviors in dog training.
A dog that can regulate their energy in various environments is invaluable.
Teaching a dog to settle sounds harder than it is…
We’ve got you covered with our
Five Steps To Teach Your Dog To Settle
At Urban Pawsibilties we train dozens of dogs anxious and overstimulated dogs every month. In training all these worked-up canines, we’ve found consistent success using these five easy-to-implement steps.
1) BUILD VALUE IN A RELAXED DOWN
At breakfast time, grab your dog’s kibble and put their bed by the couch (bed is optional if your dog will lay on the hard ground).
Put your dog on a leash, sit down, and step on the leash (we want this to be a natural but hands-free exercise).
Take a deep breath and guide or cue your dog into a down.
Mark with a calm “good” and place kibble in between their front two paws.
Deliver a total of 8-10 treats between their front two paws, one at a time at a pace of every 2-3 seconds, taking a deep breath here and there. Release them from the “down” position by saying “find it” and tossing a treat away from them to reset for another rep.
Take a deep breath, repeat the above steps several times, or until your dog is quickly offering a sit or down position after eating the “reset” treat.
Stick to Step 1 for a minimum of 3 separate training sessions.
Need a good dog bed that you can easily take on-the-go & used outdoors?
We usually recommend the Rollup Camping Dog Bed by GNarbor.
It’s great for all outdoor activities (from visiting your favorite brewery to camping!). We typically keep it in our car so we can always create a space for our dog to relax.
The dog bed is waterproof and washable, so it’ll be easy to keep clean! It’s also super easy to carry since it rolls up with an easy-to-throw handle (as you can see in the image to the right).
2) REWARD GOOD CHOICES
When you’re ready to move on, begin to only treat your dog for offering the down.
Set up the context again to help them out: leash on, step on leash, the bed is available to them, and you’re sitting down while taking deep breaths.
Give your dog about 15 seconds to see if it offers a down. If it does, begin marking and rewarding with a quiet, calm “good” and treat between its front two paws, delivering a reward every few seconds, similar to step 1. Reset with a “find it” treat tossed to the side, and repeat.
Once your dog is offering a “down” position (you don’t guide or ask for the down) and they’re showing commitment to the position (not getting up for periods), you can slow your treat delivery to a treat in between their front paws, every 3-5 seconds. Remember to take deep breaths and reset your pup occasionally.
Side Note: We recommend rewarding for a longer duration than an increase. It is highly effective to reward your dog for offering behaviors that indicate they are truly relaxing: head on their paws, looking around or observing the space they’re in (not just staring at you), deep breaths, and rolling over onto their hip or side.
3) GENERALIZE
Practice steps 1 and 2 in various positions around the house. Starting with step 1 and slowly build back into step 2.
Think different but not harder.
Practice in your bedroom with no one else around. Practice in the garage. Practice in the backyard when it’s quiet and calm.
Aim for 3 different contexts, practicing both steps 1 and 2.
4) ADD A VERBAL CUE… IF YOU WANT TO
In the next session, you’ll begin to add a verbal cue… if you want to. A verbal cue is not required but it is helpful. I like my dogs to be able to respond to the context and offer a relaxed behavior regardless of if I’ve verbally cued (requested) them to settle. I also reward my dogs for settling even when I haven’t asked them to. There’s value in both approaches.
To add the cue, set up as we previously did: put your pup on a leash, sit in a chair or on the couch, take a deep breath, and calmly say “settle” just before your pup is about to lay down.
Once they do lay down to settle, mark “good” and begin to reward between their front two paws. Repeat every few seconds for about 5 reps, similar to our previous sessions. Say “find it” and toss a treat away. Repeat for a total of 5 reps.
Give your pup a break or end the session.
Repeat adding the verbal cue in a different area of your home, in a different chair. We have to generalize the verbal cue, too!
5) THE THREE Ds: DISTRACTION, DURATION, DISTANCE
Work separately on distraction, duration, and distance before combining your training criteria.
Distraction: what’s going on around your dog while they settle.
Duration: how long your dog can settle in total and how long they can go between getting food rewards.
Distance: how far you can move from your pup while they settle.
To work on distraction, you can settle with controlled distractions initially. Think of people you can ask to do things: family members who can walk around you, talk to you, drop something, and provide other distractions that you are expecting at a pace your dog can handle.
To work on duration, gradually ping-pong between asking your dog to settle for a longer total period of time and shifting to rewarding at a slower pace. If your dog is becoming antsy, that’s a good indicator you’re making things too hard too quickly.
To work on distance, tether your dog to the chair. Move away one step, return, mark & reward, gradually building up the distance you can move away. Removing your attention from your dog or doing other things would be considered lumping distractions with distance, so save that for down the road!
Final Considerations
Consider the level of distraction as you begin to take the “settling” behavior on the road. It may be best to bring some people into your home to work on settling around people first before taking your pup anywhere that there will be other people outside of the house to work on settling.
Keep in mind that our dogs learn through pictures and context. If you change the picture, such as adding people, changing the location, or removing the leash, we often have to return to the first steps of training the behavior. It’s possible your dog will zoom through the steps in one singular session.
Because we’re teaching your dog to regulate arousal levels, it’s important to work through each step and give your dog grace when you enter new environments.
If your pup is struggling in an environment you can’t control, take it to sniff for 5 minutes, play some “find it” (tossing a treat in the grass, one at a time, for them to sniff out), and come back and try again.
The biggest factor that will impact your dog’s ability to settle is whether or not you’ve met its daily needs. A dog that is pent up with energy, hungry, thirsty, or not allowed to use its brain to problem-solve regularly will often struggle to relax. We recommend mental and physical stimulation and enrichment for all dogs every day.
Need help teaching your dog to settle?
If you’re struggling to teach your dog to relax or are experiencing other challenges with your pup, we highly recommend seeking out the guidance of a certified professional dog trainer.
Set up a 30-minute consultation or a 15-minute discovery call HERE.
