I used “Lie down” far too often, as a kind of crutch to help stop things while I could figure out what the heck to do. (Herding can be described as chess with living pieces and only microseconds to decide on and execute your next move.) “Lie down!” I’d yell, immediately following with “Lie DOWN! LIE DOWN!” In no time at all, I had trained Drift, my first Border Collie, to lie down to, and only to, “Lie down, lie DOWN, LIE DOWN!” For all I know, he was waiting for the full signal before he responded, since there was no way for him to know what the basic unit of the signal really was.
