This is from Sue Ailsby's Training Levels. The goal is to train your dog to sit and stay while you walk 20' and back. This is an amazing website and I particularly posted this because of the 300 Peck method for teaching stay. It works. You start by having them stay for a count of 1, then 2, then 3, etc. If they break the stay, you start over at 1, then 2, then 3, etc.
LEVEL TWO
Dog Sits and Stays while partner walks 20’ away and back. Partner may give extra cues while away. An official “return” is not required.
DISCUSSION: The good thing about teaching the DownStay before the SitStay is that the DownStay is easy for the dog to understand. The bad thing about teaching it first is that it will be natural for the dog to think that any duration requires a Down. Important not to get frustrated here! This is a very difficult concept to get across – I don't mean Down, I mean hold whatever position I put you in.
EASY BEGINNINGS: Ask for a Sit, then Rapid-Fire ten c/t in a row while she's sitting, just to get her thinking about the Sit. Then start 300-Peck Sits – ask for a Sit, count to one, c/t. TRY to put the food right in her mouth after each of these counted Sits. If you can't, it's not the end of the world, but try. Sit, count to 2, c/t. Sit, 3, c/t, and so on. Your criteria are important here. Under no circumstances do you want to tell a dog that she can move ANYTHING but her head or tail during a Stay, so if she moves ONE paw, or shifts her bum, she's broken the position. Under 10 seconds, if she breaks the position, give her a Rapid-Fire X5 and start your count over again from one second. Over 10 seconds, you can leave out the RF and just start from one again.
PROBLEM SOLVING:
SHE GETS UP WHEN I CLICK!
a) No problem, the click ends the behaviour. That means that when you click, she ALREADY did what you wanted her to. Problem solved.
b) If you think it would be best if she didn't get up when you click, stand closer, be ready to put the treat right in her mouth when you click. Try 10 one-second stays, then 10 two-second stays, and build up that way until she's decided she might as well remain sitting. Ailsby's Principle of Laziness says she WILL decide to remain in position if she knows the next thing you're going to do is… lemme take a wild guess here, 217 Sits in a row, maybe it'll be another SIT?! Why bother getting up when you're just going to ask her to Sit again? ALWAYS REMEMBER, though, that the click ended the behaviour. If you're too slow and she does get up, just ask her to Sit and start again.
WE'RE UP TO THREE MINUTES AND I'M SO BORED WITH INCREASING ONE SECOND AT A TIME I COULD SCREAM! Okay, okay. Dogs don't get bored but people certainly do. When she's reliably and cheerfully doing a solid 60-second SitStay, you can try increasing your duration five seconds at a time. Of course, if it doesn't work, you're back to one second at a time!
SHE MOVES WHEN I'M AWAY FROM HER! A real strong point of the clicker is that you can reward behaviour that's happening when you aren't right with the dog. If she SitStays for 10 seconds at 10', you return, click and give her a treat, you're rewarding her for staying when you're right in front of her. The whole ten seconds and ten feet distance was incidental. Fine if she's understanding it, but it doesn't give you any way of fixing a problem that doesn't involve you right in front of her. For instance, if she's standing up when you take the first step to come back to her. With the clicker, though, you can fix this easily. You KNOW when she's going to break. It isn't random (if it IS random, you're probably dealing with an attention problem, or why the heck are you asking for so much? Go back to whatever time and distance gives you ten times right!). She breaks when you take the first step to return? Fine. Click and THEN return X10. Then tighten your thigh muscle in one leg, click and return X10. Then tighten, lift that leg just off the floor, click and return X10. Then tighten, lift and plant that foot, click and return X10 (oh my gosh, you just took a step and she didn't break!). And so on. And if she breaks after the click? Of course she can, the click ends the behaviour!
ADDING A CUE: When you have the behaviour the way you want it and up to at least twenty seconds, start telling her that it has another name besides Sit. I use Stay (I don't bother with Wait, myself), and my hand signal is a fist with a thumbs-up, though a more common one is showing the dog your flat palm.
CONTINUING EDUCATION: When the dog understands that you're paying for her to remain in the Sit position until you click, start doing the "stay dance" – move to the left, to the right, clap your hands, wave your arms, do jumping jacks, turn around. Start moving away from her – remember, though, that when you make one part of a behaviour more difficult, you make everything else about it easier. That means if she's doing a ten-second SitStay with you right in front of her, and you want to move a step away from her, you lower the time to two seconds, or however long it takes you to take that step out and back.
http://www.dragonflyllama.com/%20DOG...g1/levels.html