Could someone explain to me the Probe Timeout and Down Count?

I'm thinking I need to change these on a global scale since we get a lot of down/up emails within a very short time interval.

Thanks

Do you mean retry count and retry interval?

Standard ICMP probe settings for ping,

packet size = 32
TTL = 64
retry count = 3
retry interval =1000ms

I hope that packet size and TTL parameters are self-explanatory.
When ping fails (The Dude does not receive an answer for 1000ms), The Dude should report service down, when 3 consecutive pings failed (no reply for 1000ms for each of them).