Can I drop my dog while he's moving away from me?

King is the dog this is actually built on, across the last three weeks of his program, and it is the only place in the corpus where the behaviour is both explained and then used repeatedly without further comment. The explanation comes on an evening walk and is a single aside: he has been working the down in motion, and most dogs are confused by it the first time because they think they are meant to keep walking with you. The work itself happens where it will be needed - at downtown crosswalks, and on a nature trail where the trainer says outright that he wants to see a good one. The trail session shows the rep failing and being held to: a string of repeated cues and a 'no' before it lands, then praise, then the line that tells you it is a project rather than a finished behaviour - you're gonna have a nice down in motion. And in a session with a second dog present, a down that finally comes out right is named for what it was: the down in motion he was looking for.

Bullet supplies the reason, and it is given in passing, to somebody else, in a big-box store, in the quietest session in his folder. He had been coming in to the handler on the down - that is what prompts the remark - and the answer is a behaviour rather than a correction: a down in motion, so that while the handler keeps walking he can put the dog down and hold him where he is. It is not worked on camera here. It simply appears as ordinary practice in the walks a week later, never explained again.

Dolce gives the far end of the same idea and the only prediction anyone in the corpus makes about it. Before walking a long way off to the truck, leaving her in a remote Platz with the camera, the handler says what he expects from experience: a dog who breaks a down at distance does not drift, she comes all the way back to you and downs at your feet. That is why the collar is on - not to produce the down, but to reinforce it further out than a voice will carry. Then he reports the result against his own expectation, which is the part worth keeping: she stayed there the whole time, no issues at all.

What is a down in motion?

It is the dog dropping where he is while you keep walking, and staying there. That sounds like the down you already have, and it is not: most dogs learn the down with you standing in front of them, so coming back to you is quietly built into what they think the word means. The trainer who uses it most draws the distinction directly - a down in motion, as against a down where the dog has to come around and lie down in front of you. He built it into King at downtown crosswalks, which tells you what it is for.

Why does he come to me instead of lying down where he is?

Because that is what dogs do the first time, and the trainers expect it. The reason given is that the dog thinks he is supposed to keep walking with you - the command arrives while the two of you are moving together, and staying with you is the part of the picture he is confident about. Treat it as confusion rather than as refusal: put him back where he was and ask again from there. The same instinct is what breaks a down at a real distance, where a dog will typically come all the way back to the handler and lie down at his feet rather than drifting off.

Do I need an e-collar for this?

For the version at arm's length, the sessions show cues, a marker and praise. For the version at a distance - the handler walking right away, out of range of a voice correction - one handler puts the collar on before he leaves and says exactly why: so that he can reinforce the down further out if he needs to. The distinction matters. The collar is not what produces the down; it is what makes the down enforceable at the distance you are asking for. On that occasion he never used it, because the dog held the whole time and he said so.

Where should I practise it?

Where you will need it. In this corpus it is worked on downtown crosswalks, on a nature trail, and on trail bridges the dog had previously balked at - places where being able to stop the dog where he stands is worth more than being able to call him in. That is the argument for the skill in one line: sometimes what is between you and your dog is a road, and the last thing you want is a command that means come through it.

Reading the first attempts as disobedience. The dog coming to you and lying down at your feet is the expected first response, not a refusal.

Assuming the down you already have will hold at a distance. It is the same word and a different behaviour, and it fails in a specific, predictable way.

Asking for it at a distance with nothing that can reach the dog. The handler in this corpus puts the collar on before he walks away, and says that is what it is for.

You say 'down' and he trots back to you first and then lies down at your feet.

He is off across a car park or a road from you and your only tool is a recall - which means calling him through the thing you are worried about.

His down holds while you are next to him and falls apart as soon as you are far enough away that your voice does not carry.