I believe there are four basic skills that any good dog needs. That includes Here, Heel, Sit, and Place. This article is all about Place.
This is typically one of the first things I teach my dogs. It is a very black and white position, either the dog is on the place board or not, which makes it easier for them to understand. There are a lot of ways I use to teach my dogs that "place" is the place to be.
When doing basic obedience, if they are still a puppy as you see young Kip here is in the photo to the right. I will use their kibble as their food reward for training sessions. I usually feed them three times a day until they are six months old, those are all great training opportunities. When I am using their kibble I will usually end the training session with what I call a jackpot, I dump out the rest of their food on the place board and let them eat from there. Another way I communicate to my dogs that they should love the place board is by giving them bones or chew toys on it. Yes, they will usually try to get up and wander around sometimes, I will simply grab the bone or chew toy and redirect them to place and then give it back. Over the course of training the dog starts to be able to extend their time on place longer and longer.
Something I have found useful for hunting scenarios is making sure to train place with as many different things as possible. Once my dog understands the command, I want to generalize it to as many different objects as possible in as many different areas as possible. I strive to do this with all commands since dogs have such a difficult time generalizing things but place is a must. You never know when "place" might be a downed tree or rock in a hunting situation and I want my dog to be able to use those as "place" if needed.
I have a story I like to tell about training place that I'll share here. This is about Ryder, one of the first dogs I trained, not pictured.
Ryder was not understanding the "place" command at all. I do not know where the disconnect was but she could not understand that I wanted her to get up onto the place stand. I had to break this down to the most basic level and build it back up. I laid a towel out on the grass and slowly started walking her back and forth over it until she forgot it was there. I kept that up for a few training sessions. Then I started introducing the "place" vocal command when she was on the towel, still just walking back and forth over it. I did this for multiple training sessions. Next, I started to stop her on the towel with the vocal command and having her sit on the towel. I did this for multiple training sessions. I got a low to the ground place stand and started to repeat the previous steps with that. Again, I did multiple training sessions on all of the previous steps but with the place stand. This process took what seemed like forever but I was finally able to get Ryder on place and get that into her bag of tricks. I share this story to remind myself that it is training, sometimes you have to take a step back and break it down to the most basic level to move forward.
In closing, I hope you have found this post useful. I cannot tell you the amount of times that I have used "place" in many different situations to help keep control of my dogs. I even use place in the house!
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