Here is how I teach stay: It is detailed and very long, as it is part of the book I am writing. It is a little rough and probably not the finished product, but it's quicker for me to copy and paste than it is to write a lot all over again. Some of the things mentioned may not make perfect sense to you because of pre-existing chapters which explain some of those things. But the main thing is to break things down into small parts, set the dog up for success and reinforce at a high rate at first.
Stay
No matter what you’re teaching your dog, always think in terms of breaking it into parts wherever you can and working each part separately at first. With stay, I see three main parts; there’s the duration, how long is your dog going to be asked to stay. There’s the distance between you and your dog. The further away you are, the more difficult. And finally, there are distractions, the type and degree that will be in the environment where your dog will be able to hold the stay successfully. It certainly would be difficult for a young dog starting out learning this tedious task with squirrels running past or children playing with a ball. That would be setting the dog up to fail.
Always incorporate a release word into your dog’s tasks so that he learns he must stay where you left him until you give permission to get up or move away. I use “OK.†It’s probably not the best word since it is used a lot in every day conversation. Some people use, “free†or “release.†Anything you choose is fine as long as that is the cue you always use to indicate to the dog that he may get up from where you left him.
Start out in the most boring room of your house where there are no distractions. Let’s start with duration and have your dog sit. Stand right in front of him for just one second and pop him a treat and tell him “good boy†quietly and release. Since he has not had much practice with the stay, get that release word in quickly before he breaks the stay. That release word must become part of the deal and tightly associated with the exercise. Keep your praise low key and quiet. Any excitable praise is likely to cause him to leap up in a fit of joy and break the stay before you get a chance to get your release word in. Rewarding and making a fuss after you’ve released him is fine to make the whole task more fun, but be sure to reward before you release him so that he learns that staying is what he’s being reinforced for, not for getting up. Set him up for success. Remember, the more chance for reinforcement for a correct response, the quicker he’ll learn. Now, bring him around in a little circle and start a new exercise. Repeat what you just did, only see if he can hold it for two seconds, treat, praise and release. Then three seconds and so on.
Now, mix it up. This time, have your pup stay for one second, treat without releasing, then two seconds, treat, then three, treat. What you’ve done prior is to work that release word so that it will assist him in knowing when he has permission to break the stay. You’re showing him a contrast now. He is holding the stay and getting a tiny treat each second that he holds it. Don’t ask for too much too soon. Try three or four seconds, rewarding after each and then release him. Have a little tousling fun for a moment and come back to it as long as he seems interested.
So, gradually, over time, you’re going to be adding more duration, sometimes breaking it up with a treat/praise and release and sometimes asking for a little more with a continual holding of the stay. If he breaks the stay before you’ve released him, you’ve asked for too much too soon. Go back to where he was successful and work there a little more.
Once he is getting onto it and holding a stay with you right in front of him for say, ten seconds or so, start adding your cue word and a hand signal. Put your hand up like a traffic cop and say, “stay.†Remember we talked about not muddying up the waters by throwing English words at him that don’t have any meaning yet and getting in the way of his trying to get the behavior. The exception would be the release word because it is not so much a skill as it is the freedom to be released from the performance. With the release word, you can open your arms and make a fuss over him, have some playtime and generally stop all that concentration for a moment.
Give your verbal and visual cue for stay only once. Vary the location you have him stay and vary the hiding place where you retrieve your treat. If you use a clicker, your treat can be on a table near by. But if you don’t have that small bridge of time, you must get the treat to your dog immediately. A pocket or fanny pack will work. Get the behavior first before your dog sees the treat.
Once he’s getting the hang of staying with you right smack dab in front of him and is able to hold it for ten or fifteen seconds reliably, it’s time to incorporate the distance part of this. Anytime you’re adding a new criteria, relax all other criteria. Give your dog his cue to stay and step back one step and immediately, without any hesitation, return to standing right in front of him, treat/praise and have him hold it. Step back two steps and return like you’re on a spring….immediately. Treat/praise. Then three steps back and so on, gradually adding distance but no duration. Work this for some time until he is staying reliably with a distance between you of say, six or eight feet. Again, you can break it up so that sometimes you release and start a new exercise and sometimes have him continue to stay put. Breaking up the exercise can keep him from getting bored and with puppies, especially, their attention span is that of a gnat. Throw a toy, play a little and come back to it or even do another skill for a while. It’s imperative that the pup is interested and having fun. Tomorrow is another day.
After he’s gotten quite reliable staying with you walking back six or eight feet, you can start putting the distance and duration together, making it as easy as possible so your pup can succeed and store up lots of reinforcement. Step back one or two steps and ask for two or three seconds and gradually work your way up to further away and longer duration. Be sure to reinforce for each correct response and remember to practice in different places, with no distractions.
Now comes the “fun†part…the part that can try the patience of every owner or trainer. Distractions. Remember to relax other criteria. In this case, the duration and the distance. Make it easy for him when another person walks through the living room or you drop a toy on the floor next to you. You might move your arms, jump up and down a couple of times. See what you can get away with as long as he holds the stay. If he breaks it and comes to play, he is not being stubborn or naughty. He needs more practice where he was successful. Gradually work in more distractions. Take him outside where there might be more sights and sounds that motivate him more than his interest in staying. Don’t rush this part. Over time, you’ll be raising the criteria; the distance from you, the duration and the distractions. You’ll be trying him out in different locations and your own body position in relation to him will need to be varied as well. A dog may understand that sitting and staying is only something that is done when his owner is standing in front of him, facing him. That is part of the cue. Now, you must show him that stay means stay even if you’re facing away from him, turned sideways to him, squatting down, lying down. You will also be having him stay when he is lying down or standing, not only sitting. Those things will need to be worked in as well.
All these things take time, practice and patience. As he becomes very proficient in staying, it will not be necessary to treat him each and every time he is successful. You will be going onto a fixed reward schedule for a little while, say for two or three sessions or so where you’ll be reinforcing him every third stay. Then you will go onto a variable reinforcement schedule where you’ll be mixing up the number of correct responses in order to be reinforced; after two correct responses, after four, after one, after three, after eight and gradually spreading them out more. If you completely stop reinforcing a dog for behaviors you like, you will likely see some regression at some point. So, you must reinforce frequently enough that the behavior doesn’t fall apart.
Here is where a lot of people ruin their dog’s solid stay: They call him to come from a stay. Don’t do this. Go to your dog. I will call my dog from a stay, only one out of every ten stays and only when he has developed a rock solid stay in all kinds of circumstances. Even then, I use the word, “wait,†not “stay.†Even though you have given him permission to break the stay to come, it puts it in his mind that anticipation of getting to break it and run to you or run somewhere else. Keep your dog’s stay solid. It might save his life one day.
Creating a default stay (that's the next part of my stay chapter, along with other more advanced things like long down stays and staying while the owner is out of sight etc. But I will leave that stuff out of here)
Written by: Carrie
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