Easy Stay Training For Dogs: Teach What To Do And When It’s Over

Stay training for dogs is something people search for frequently. It might be a sit stay, down stay, or stand stay. Now, it often surprises people that I never use the word stay but teach dogs what to do and when it's over instead. By focusing on teaching dogs what to do and when it's over, staying in position for a duration is something dogs will easily master and have fun with learning because it's trained with games.

What to do: it might be a sit. “I want you to sit.” And when it's over: is the release. And the release, I strongly encourage you to use a word that you don't use in your everyday language. Make it something more salient to the dogs. Something they don't really hear that often.

What to do. When it's over. The gap in between what you do and when it's over, that's called duration. That is how long we want our dog to stay there. Duration is a gap. It's nothing. You don't focus on duration. That gap grows as a byproduct of understanding what to do and when it's over. And if you don't have a dog who understands what to do and when it's over, all the focus on duration can do is confuse the dog or put them into fight, flight, or freeze.

Duration is just a byproduct of a dog really, really understanding what it is you want them to do. So, our focus isn't on duration.

And you've got to recognize first of all, there's levels of the dog holding a position for a duration. So, the levels might be, I'm just introducing. I've got the introduction, now my dog is in kindergarten.’ So, we do kindergarten then we go to grade school, that’s quite a few grades. Then we go through high school, several more grades. Ooh, now we're going off to university or what my American friends might call college. And after that we might go to a PhD. You see we keep adding levels. So, I've got my PhD.

Woo, now I've got a professional dog who understands what to do and when it's over. And after a professional I'm going up to an elite expert. Those are the levels that we have to teach our dog these control behaviors.

Now what are control behaviors? A sit, a down, maybe a stand. For most of my students it's either sit or down and eventually they'll add a stand. And the behavior of staying on a mat or what we call the Hot Zone. I like that to be a raised dog bed.

So, I have four games that I use as part of this training. Four games that I use to convey all of this training to my dog.

So, we've got the Collar Grab. We've got the Tug, we got the ItsYerChoice, we've got the Crate Games. Now we've got behavior that we can grow. So, what have we got? ABCD. So, the first thing we need to teach a dog when they are A - allowed to move, that's the A.

A - we going to teach the dog the release word. When are they allowed to move? And then we're B - we're going to build the behavior that is telling the dog what they should do. And when we've got that, now we're going to grow that criteria, grow their understanding, right? So that we can add distractions. Then every distraction and every reinforcement that we give them, we're giving them the understanding. Sit doesn't mean paddle your feet. Sit doesn't mean move around in a circle.

What, in your mind is the picture you're looking for? And that's what you're going to teach your dog. So, we've got allowed, we've got build up behavior, we've got C - grow the criteria, and finally we're going to D - grow the duration. And the duration is just a natural byproduct of clear understanding of what to do and a hundred percent clear understanding of when it's over. And when you've got that, if you want to leave your dog in a sit or a down for five minutes, have at it. 15 minutes, have at it.

I have a hundred percent confidence your dog will willingly want to do it because they have such great understanding. What to do and when it's over, go together.