STAY in a practical way!
Most people know how to teach their dog to stay, but do they actually know when to use it? Here is how one typical situation at home can be turned around and managed easily simply by teaching your dog to STAY.
Dog owners often go to dog classes and learn that STAY means don’t move but the odd thing is that when I ask people in classes – “when or where would you use STAY?”, the room goes quiet and very few have answers. And then I get… ” but my dog does this and I don’t know how to stop it”. That is when I say – “have you taught it to STAY in that situation?” And again, silence.
So here is what I suggest. If you don’t want your dog to move from a spot, train it and put STAY into practice.
An example I have used here is a situation I was dealing with daily, where my dog Stanley would run up and down along the chicken run like a maniac, breaking my plants, scaring my chickens and then greedily running into their pen to steal their food scraps. Yelling and punishing was out of the picture as that is not my style so the only and easy solution for me was to teach him to STAY in this particular situation.
Over a few sessions, he learned to remain still while waiting for me to enter the chook pen, feed the chooks, collect their eggs, exit the pen and return to him and his reward was either his toy or a bread crust which he prefers by far.
So when you have a specific predictable situation where your dog is getting in the way or getting super excited, why not start working on your STAY so it learns what it can do in that moment instead! And don’t forget to return to it, bridge and then reward it.
