How Rosco Learned to Stay and Sit Stay for Greetings

[Adina P]

Disclaimers:

--  Although I love discussing training and believe I have a good grasp of principles for a lay person, I'm not a trainer and have yet to 'finish' any of my dogs or win any obedience titles.  So take this for what it's worth. 

-- DON'T try this at home :-)  These snippets don't give you the whole picture, just a glimpse.  It is not a complete picture of the step-by-step.  Take from this the general principles, not necessarily the "how to."

-- Sit Stay won't keep your dog from jumping on people when he's free and not under command...

But since we've been discussing jumping up on people or not being polite on leash when greeting people, I thought I'd show you a bit about how I train my dogs to hold still. 

So that is how I start...and from there add more distance or time or distraction (but never all three at once).  The point of this video is the principle that you start small.  Teaching stay starts with teaching to stay a very short time with you nearby.  This is true whether you teach with a regular collar, choke chain, clicker, treats, or nothing.  You have to be sure the dog fully understands what you want from him and gradually expand to longer times, longer distances from you.



And that is how I progress to people interaction (while under command).  I think that with continued people interaction under command (transitioning to off leash obedience too) over time a dog starts to make that the go to behavior chosen.

This is Boca doing kind of what I described above.

[Adina P]

Don't look too closely at the correction -- it's partly accurate :-)  I definitely didn't use both hands in part of the video and you definitely need to have both hands on the leash to correct Rosco.  Otherwise it's like trying to move a boulder with dental floss.  It would have no effect.  Again the point was the big picture, not necessarily the details that you saw: teach a solid understanding of the command, progress slowly, work up to difficult distractions with baby steps (some dogs need more 'baby' than others) and don't expect a dog that has never been practiced in a similar situation to do well.

[Star and Goldie]

I worked on the around the corner stay with Goldie yesterday. I am proud to say that after only 5 times she stayed for 1 full minute with me out of sight. I really did not expect that! So glad you mentioned that here so I could start that right away. Hopefully it's a good sign of things to come:)