Stellar Stays
FOUNDATION EXERCISES
GETTING SIT & DOWN POSITIONS READY FOR A STAY
First of all so we can begin working on a stay in a down we need to make sure our dog is laying down in a comfortable hip rolled position.
Have your dog down
When they are down bring a treat near their nose and then slowly move it towards their side, like you are going to take it to their belly
Feed when they roll the hip
If they won’t flop that way try the other side, sometimes some dogs prefer a hip roll on one side
To prepare a dog to be able to stay as we move around them we first want to get the comfortable with our motion while they are still
Have your dog sit
As you go to give them a treat, step back and forth in front of them
When they are successful with that try walking all the way around them as you give a treat
See if you can lure them into a sit facing away from you
Lean back and forth behind them and reward each time they switch their head to follow you without breaking their stay
BUILDING A STRONG STAY FOUNDATION
In this game we are going to start working on our pups impulse control with food at the same time as setting a foundation for a stay which is essentially a dog learning how to control themselves and be patient when they want something.
Have a treat in your hand and have your puppy sit
Bring a treat down in your open hand about a foot away from their nose (same position as for the above release exercise)
If the puppy moves towards the treat, quickly close your hand and draw your hand straight up until the pup sits again, then drop your hand back to the same position and try again.
Keep repeating until your pup no longer jumps towards the treat, as soon as they stay still for even just a moment, bring the treat to them where they are sitting and give it to them.
If they get up as you are bringing the treat to them, pull it back up, do not give them the treat unless their bottom is on the ground.
Do this exercise maybe 3-5 times in a session, no need to drill it.
Once you can see they will not budge when you drop the treat down into position you can start saying “stay” as you drop your hand into that position. Be sure if you say “stay” that you then always say your release after you give the treat for the stay.
TEACHING A RELEASE COMMAND
Before we can teach a rock solid stay we first need to teach our puppies what ends the stay. Your dog’s understanding of what stay means relies heavily on them understanding what they are waiting for, what tells them they don’t have to be still anymore, so we want to teach them this before we start teaching the stay. So you need to select a verbal cue that means they are free to move (for a deaf dog you can use a visual cue). I use “ok” but you can choose any word you would like to use.
So the first bit of teaching this well is to not have the release tied to a visual thing you do (unless teaching a deaf pup) because dog’s prioritize visual cues and will be slow to tie the verbal cue if they are seeing a cue too. We don’t want a stay being tied to a visual cue if possible so we can do any physical things we need to and not have our dog’s mistake this for a release. This is a funny explanation of an example but when I hike with other people’s dogs I’ve not trained I can tell how well the dog’s stay release is if I need to pee 😂 . As soon as I squat boom, dog in my face.
So if you want to be able to tie your shoes, take a pee outside, pick up things you drop, do yoga in your house, etc then make sure your dog’s don’t think you moving means they are done staying.
Have three treats in your hand
Place your other hand in your puppy’s collar, with your palm facing the back of their head. This bit is important as it sets the difference between using a slight push vs using a slight pull which will engage a dog’s opposition reflex and work against your goal here.
Place your hand with the treats out about a foot away from your pup’s nose, level with their muzzle. If they don’t stand up, give them a treat and put your hand back out a foot away, if they stay give them another and again put the hand out a foot away, for the third treat instead of bringing it to the puppy say your release cue and with the hand still in the collar give the slightest push forward to help the pup move to the treat.
If the pup gets up at any point during the above, just help them sit again before resuming, do not reprimand them or jerk on their collar, the hand is only there to keep them from moving forward to it until you give the ok.
Keep your hand in the pup’s collar for this exercise until they are no longer needing that push forward and are popping forward as soon as they hear the release.
BEGINNING STAY WORK
Once we have taught our puppies their release command and we have worked on impulse control it’s time to make our stays a more formal exercise where we start to push everything we can do right next to our dog. Don’t worry about getting far away from your puppy! Work close so your reward timing can catch them for being correct! Duration is far more important in stay work than distance, most real life stays are used very close to you and are about wanting a dog to be patient.
Always start with just one foot moving, and have the foot closest to the dog move last.
Try to make sure your dog is successful at least 80% of the time or you are pushing too much.
Always reward in the stay position rather than just for the release.
Move confidently, don’t creep away or move as if you are expecting a mistake, creeping stalking hesitant movements make dogs move because your body is subtly inviting it. Strong postures hold positions much better.
You can see in the video towards the end how I handle a mistake, allowing a dog to self correct so the rewards can resume. You can always use this technique if the dog breaks because they want to follow you or want your rewards, this won’t work if they are breaking to move away from you. But if they come to you, let them see the position is what keeps the reward game going.
TAKING YOUR STAYS FURTHER
As your dog is getting more solid in their understanding of how to stay in a position once you put them there you want to keep expanding their understanding of how to stay no matter what the handler is doing so their stay is not dependent on you standing there still staring at them. You want to be able to do anything, move in all directions and have your dog stay still. I teach this exercise so that the dog understands the position itself is what opens up the rewards toy build a high value for the position you left them in. I emphasize the position pays rather than waiting for mistakes and correcting them, I wait for the position and reinforce that and ignore mistakes until they resume the correct behavior, this teaches puppies to self correct and to value that place.
GENERALIZING STAYS
take your stay work on the road!
practice in as many new locations as you can
start short and successful with each new location gradually building your times in each new spot
be adaptable, if you are working on stays and a person wants to pet your dog, decide if maybe the socializing needs to take precedence and then release and do that before getting back to it, or the same if a nice dog is walking by and you want to take advantage of that. On the flip side if your pup is super social it’s ok to say no when someone asks if they can say hi if you are working, just say “sorry not right now, we are in training” in a sweet friendly voice.
read the situation, somethings might be too much for your puppy to be able to stay, loud noises, lots of people, kids, skateboards, etc. If these things happen support your pup through the process, let them know it’s ok to move if they are scared, then help them move further away and try again. The more calm and cool you act about it all the more likely your dog is to follow your focus and stay connected to your training.
PROOFING STAYS
After you have generalized stays and your dog has a good understanding of what the game is it’s time to start proofing, which means testing it, seeing what you can do to challenge and test under what circumstances does the behavior break down. During dog training you want to be the one testing and breaking your dog’s performance if it’s going to break.
Now here’s the thing, our goal is NOT to break the behavior, it’s to systematically make things more challenging and keep bringing in more variables and catching our dog’s being successful. This is how you raise and train confident reliable dogs. If you test TOO much and are constantly breaking the behavior you can take a happy confident learner and create frustration, confusion and a dog that wants to avoid training.
Many people do not recognize how some dogs display confusion. I so often meet with people who call their dog’s stubborn, when the dog has not been able to be successful enough to figure out what you are trying to communicate. Many dog’s who run away from training and seem distracted are doing so because you are making it too hard and they don’t know what to do so they go into avoidance behavior. Some dogs get more hyper when they can’t figure something out and start pacing and whining or even just trying to climb into your lap, they are trying to change the channel because they don’t get it. Some dogs try ten times harder when they don’t understand and it seems like they are trying to frustrate you, when they are just trying to hard they are doing it ten times harder the wrong way, but they are trying, they just don’t understand.
For a dog to understand what you are trying to train, they have to be successful more than they are not! So in general when proofing you are ensuring you are getting at least a 75-80% success rate. This is during proofing. During the teaching and generalizing stage you are looking for more like 95%. So if you practice ten down stays with throwing proofing distraction challenges at your dogs they should be able to be successful and not break the stay 8 out of the ten times. If they are breaking 6 out of 10 times they are not going to easily learn without bringing a lot of stress and confusion into your learning game. You do not need failures, again our goal is not to break the behavior, only see what tests might break it so you know what areas still need more work before the world throws challenges at your dog they are not ready for. But you also don’t need to be afraid of a few mistakes, it’s ok to sometimes push a little harder and see if they are ready for more. Just back up and help if you see they cannot.
When proofing and you find a challenge that breaks the behavior you want to have a three and out plan, remember we want that 80% success rate. If I push and my dog makes a mistake, I simply reset and try again (I don’t scold or correct, just don’t reward) if my dog makes the same mistake again, then for the next attempt I need to try something different so my dog doesn’t fail the next attempt. The first mistakes are sometimes just honest mistakes, they don’t understand and when you don’t reward they get it and then are successful, if they make a mistake the second time right away it means they don’t understand and the first reset did not convey your information and what you are asking is likely too big of a jump, so back up and make the next attempt easier. You can stay closer, do whatever you were doing slower, or softer. You can reward sooner. But change something to make it easier for your third try if they have not earned the reward the first two attempts.
BUILDING DURATION FOR STAYS AND PLACES
Building duration is often the thing people struggle with the most! This is a dance. This is about being able to read your dance partner and see if they are calm and settled or about to move. When you really know a dog you can usually see they are going to break if you are paying attention. They generally all have certain tells, they might drop their heads every time right before standing, or shift their hips right before breaking a down stay, or they might start whining. Sometimes you can even see changes of breathing patterns and see muscle tension vs relaxation. We are looking for all these little tells so we can push right up to those limits without going over them.
When building duration we want an intermittent variable schedule the dog cannot predict but feels satisfied with. So for example, I don’t want to reward on a fixed schedule like give a treat every 10 seconds. Because if the dog sorts out this pattern, then when suddenly 10 seconds go by and he doesn’t get a reward you can get a sudden breakdown of behavior, because the dog thinks the reward won’t happen now because it’s not the pattern. So we want to constantly be changing the timing so it’s not predictable. So sometimes it’s 10 seconds or 15 or 12 or 8, but it’s always different, but it’s all close to the dog’s current tolerance.
So generally what I am doing is pushing up against but staying right around their current duration. So if I know my dog is great for 30 seconds but after that it all falls apart my schedule will look something like this: I reward at: 28 secs, then 31 secs later, then 27 seconds, then 30 seconds, then 33 seconds, then 26 seconds. So i’m going to be within that bubble near 30 seconds but i’m dancing between pushing for more and making it easier. And with each session those pushes get more as I’m building success. And my schedule is always also adjusted to the environment and my dog’s mood and what I am currently observing. So if distractions move in I might reward quicker, if the dog is calm and the environment is calm I might push longer.
One big piece of advice, use a timer or watch! People SUCK at gauging time when training a dog. You can feel like you’ve done a two minute stay when it’s really only been 45 seconds. So often people don’t realize they have not built as much duration as they believe, so time it! Most dogs have a tipping point, and once you get it duration after doesn’t matter, and it’s surprisingly not much for some dogs. So a dog that can do a ten minute down stay can often do and hour easily, but a dog that can’t do a two minute stay yet can take a long time to get to a 5 minute stay. Those first ten minutes are the hardest!
Challenges for Testing your stays!
TESTING YOUR RELEASE CUE
place a treat on the ground 6ft in front of your dog on a sit stay.
return to your dog’s side
standing perfectly still looking straight ahead give your release cue
do the same as above except when you return to your dog, face the opposite direction of the food and your dog
do the same facing away in different directions, sitting, etc
STAY 10 TREAT DROP OUT
have your dog stay
walk out 6 feet in front of your dog and place a treat down
return to your dog
walk back out and place another treat
return around your dog back
keep repeating until you have placed out 10 treats
after the 10th treat is placed out and you have returned to your dog’s side release them to run and eat the treats.
If your dog struggles, you can give a treat some of the time when you return to your dog, but the goal is to be able to get all ten treats out without any rewards between. But remember these are proofing challenges and not training exercises, so if your dog struggles that means you have to back up and TRAIN not just test. So if they are making mistakes, stop the challenge and give more rewards for staying and work your way back to this once you have done more training.
TEN TREAT DROP AND DELIVER
have your dog sit and stay
walk out about 6 feet in front of your dog
drop a pile of ten treats
return to your dog
if your dog stays walk out to the pile and take one treat, return and feed it to your dog
repeat until you have delivered 9 treats, release dog to go eat the last treat
CHANGING HANDLER POSITIONS
Can you sit down in front of your dog 5-6 feet away and they stay
Can you sit down and face away from your dog 5-6 feet away and they stay
Can you lay down in front of your dog and they stay
Can you lay down and roll in front of your dog and they stay