Those Pesky Stays

At every dog show, seminar, judge’s dinner, on multiple facebook posts, phone calls, attached to many pigeons, in smoke signals concerning trial dogs, stays always end up the topic of conversation. Always. While it may be the easiest to actually train and the most black and white as far as criteria, many trainers struggle with the concept of "stay". I have heard a plethora of methods used to teach and maintain them – many of which make me either roll my eyes or cringe. I felt is was time to talk about the hard facts about stays.

Stays are Black and White

Its such a simple concept – DO NOT MOVE. However, many people fail to realize movement is what should be corrected in stays. FEET movement. If the dog moves their feet go in and put them back. That is as simple as it can get.

Stays are EASY to build Value to

It is easy to go in and reward stillness. A lot. It’s easy to introduce variable rewards to a dog that is sitting still.

Stays should not be made HOT

Stays are all about confidence in understanding the task at hand. Adding too much pressure here can be a disaster. For that reason, I do not correct anything but movement. So if the dog’s feet are still, but it is sniffing the ground – I do nothing. If the sniffing was excessive – I would put a line on the dog and when he went to sniffing I would pull them out of position and correct for movement. All stay corrections need to be for movement and nothing else.

Stays do not need additional behaviors added in

Laying their head down, not getting comfortable by switching sides on the dog, etc are all additional behaviors that are unnecessary for a good stay. Just keep this simple.

Stays RARELY need props

Put the dolls (for beating) away, get rid of your platforms, what is needed is for you to stop pushing the dog too fast and build value – there is no quick fix and many of those methods do not carry over to the ring anyway.

Stays need Success

If you want solid stays – set your time and stick to it until you accomplish it. If I set my watch at 2 minutes and my dog goes down at 1:59 seconds, they will do another 2 minutes over until they give me the duration I seek. This is a must. Never let a dog break and move on to something else.

Stays need Effort

If your dog continuously goes down and stops giving effort, time to up your game. I do “Law and Order” stays for my “lazy’ dogs which means I put them on a stay during an hour long program AND WAIT for them to go down, when they go down, I will correct for the lack of effort, then ask for the duration I was after again. Again, the only correction comes from moving.

I don’t thinks stays are hard, but once trained many people fail to go back and keep a variable reward system in them and forget to mix it up time wise. Stays are important so get out there and train them!