Sit/down/staystaystay

I would have gotten started on this in a more timely manner but it came to my attention that I had not drilled doggy obedience with Rocket since, oh, since class last week and everything works a lot better if we drill our skills more frequently. Like Daily.

Wednesday is our last class and so far no one has volunteered to tape him doing his baby agility course. HINT. Don;t you all want to see him being Agility Dog? Hopefully someones camera person will  be cool and volunteer to tape other people who couldn't talk anyone into helping them out.

I would love to drill our lessons daily but frankly, its not fun and sometimes it can be frustrating and a lot of the time its depressing - and this if we do it religiously. I want him to catch on to something anything we learned in class. So far he can "sit" but we learned "sit" months ago and had months to work on it, but now he sits like he was born to it. I would hate to be drilling  "down" for months and months. This gives me hope though that eventually he will "down" without a treat and implied threats. If he can learn to "sit" on command, it goes to reason that he will learn to "down" on command sans treat. I repeat this to myself like a mantra.

Its not like its a huge time suck, this drilling its ten or fifteen minutes a day drilling Sit/Down/Stay. Over/and/over/and/over. He sits fine, he stays fine, he does not "down". Down is a problem. He will down with a treat but no treat no down. This is a downer.

He sits like a champ, he requires not treat and sometimes he will sit without the command. Sit is an upper. I like sit.

I am beginning to like Stay. He stays very well, he will stay as long as he can see me, and then he gets a little darty - but I can understand this and I correct it.  I am actually kind of proud of his stay. I am now trying to add "come and sit" to his repertoire.. I like that he comes when called but I don't like the parade he throws himself when he he does this. Right now "come" is an excuse to aim himself at me and then go on a rampage. I don't like this. This is a downer. he has to "come" at some point because he can't and won't stay indefinitely - which I hear that some dogs can and do. Some dogs suck.

Has anyone else noticed that people will demand a level of obedience in other peoples dogs that they would never expect from their own?