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Originally Posted by theporkieyorkie  Prince won the prize and got put in his crate last night. He was begging, so I put him in the cage and gave him his treat. I left him in there for about 15 minutes and he just sat and stared until I let him out. He spent A LOT of time in a crate at his last owners so he's no stranger to it. Ricky on the other hand, does not do as well in a crate.
After I let Prince out, I started working on their "stay" command. Ricky doesn't have the attention span that Prince does. He gets bored easily and gets up. Prince, on the other hand is so treat driven that he will sit and wait until he gets his treat. The only problem is, when I put him in a down/stay, he rolls over and wants belly rubs.
Prince is also somewhat confused with commands. He already knows, sit, down, shake, touch, and play dead. I think the hand commands I use with the words are what's confusing him.
I can't wait until they learn the "stay" command though. The pizza guy came last night and it would have been so nice to not have them barking at his heels. |
I'd be willing to bet you might be leaving them in the stay too long if one or both get up from the stay before your "release". Just start out with them staying for about 5 seconds - whatever they can control - and then release, treat and praise. Keep them at that short stay until they can hold it every time you ask for 6 or 7 times in a row over the day's training sessions and then advance to 7 or 8 second stays, release, treat and praise. Keep working up in very short increments of 2 or 3 stays per session and don't make the training sessions very long at all. Better to have short, more frequent sessions for a dog then boring them with repeating commands too often in a single session. My max for Tibbe is about 3 x per command and move on to the next thing to a max of 5 minutes per training session. And I used to get in 2 - 3 training sessions per day. But every so often, I would ask him to do just one command or trick sometime during the day out of the blue and that way we'd slowly build up on his impulse control and get in an extra trick here and there if he were having trouble getting one.
As far as the staying when you have a visitor or caller at the door, that is one of the hardest to train and keep current for these little terriers! It takes a great deal of training to achieve that in a high-energy, socially-needed dog so don't expect that to come for a long, long time unless you work intensively on that with a helper who calls frequently at the door to inure them to someone coming, knocking and exciting them. Just work on the small things at first, not allowing them to cross your boundaries of behavior and don't despise small beginnings, as my old grandmother used to say!
