Teaching Your Dog Calmness
My process would keep in mind to increase either or both the distance or duration to everything you do (or always increase the challenge). Keep in mind you don’t want your dog to fail. So your distance/duration should always be attainable, but increase in increments (challenge) your dog can handle. Like many training activities start inside with less distractions. Teach inside, test outside.
Keep in mind; my goal would be calmness.
My main focus would be for him to not be released unless he is calm and when you are close to him so he doesn’t RUN to you. I wouldn’t want your dog to be waiting to run to you when you call him. I think that would build and encourage excitement and that is the opposite of what I would want to encourage. Keep in mind there would be time of play (primarily outside) when calmness isn’t as important. But inside calmness and less excitement would be encouraged. I know this is difficult because everyone wants to play with puppies and young dogs…
So to answer your question, I would consider a goal for him to eventually stay down for all different interactions but not expect to start that way.
