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Originally Posted by Maximo  I found a great book at the library authored by Deborah Wood titled "Little Dogs: Training your Pint-Sized Companion."
She writes that to teach stay, first teach your dog to sit. Have the dog sit, back up 6 inches and give the stay command. Give your dog a treat after one second and say "good sit-stay." Don't wait until you release the dog from staying to give a treat, otherwise the dog will not connect the reward with staying.
Gradually increase the time between giving the stay command and rewarding -- one second, 3 seconds, and so on. Give the reward after each successful stay.
Deborah also advises to teach "stay" as a trick and not like it is a punishment. In other words, be joyous in tone when giving the command and praise for successful completion. |
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Originally Posted by evab I have a book by Victoria Stillwell "It's me or the dog", she also did It's me or the dog USA on TV. The "Stay" command.
((The secret of teaching your dog to stay is not to move through the stages too fast. Build up gradually, both lengthening the time and distance. unlike other commands, you can repeat the STAY command without undermining the training. That's because you're not asking your dog to take a specific action, and to take it promptly. Instead you are asking the dog to do nothing at all.
Put your dog in the sitting position and stand infront of him.
Put your palm near his face and say STAY, wait a second and reward.
repeat and gradually lengthen the time between command and reward until he is staying for ten seconds.
Then you can take a step back. If your dog moves to follow you, give a correct "UH OH"! and try again.
Slowly lengthen the distance between you. Always go back to the dog and on't praise or reward him until you are physically close to him again. praising from a distance will only encourage him to come to you, which undermines what you are trying to teaching him.)) Hope this helps  |
I used a similar method to train Uni as well. Back up a few steps and return to you dog and then reward. I use the hand signal and voice command from the beginning. Now Uni will stay on the voice command alone. Once they get it, try turning you back also. Go around the house and come back, they will stay until you release them.
This also worked out doubly well for us, as stay for her also can mean freeze or stop. If she is playful and doesn't want to be picked up (jumping around and dodging you) I say stay and she will stop and stand there 9tail wagging too
) and then i can pick her up. Or if we are outside peeing and she is done, I say stay and she will not move so I can pick her up and cross the parking lot.