Stays are an important part of many different sports and a helpful part of an enjoyable life with your dog! We will work on stays with duration, distractions, distance, out of sight, formality, stays while being touched, and combining all of these components. We will work on down stays, sit stays and stand stays. We will begin with stays that you can practice at home in real life: stay while you stare at a computer screen, stay while you put the food bowl down, stay while you open a door, stay while you load the dishwasher and more. We will also go over start line stays for agility and building reliability in your 2on2off contact stays. Stays with big distractions for long durations are possible! Let's take the boring out of stays! This class will show you how!
Let's take the boring out of stays! This class will show you how!
*We will not be going over teaching dogs to move into the 2on 2off position. We will only be working on teaching the dog to stay in that position until released. **This class will not address teaching dogs to be comfortable with being touched by new people for dogs who are worried about that. It will go over touch for dogs that aren't worried about people. For confidence building with new people, please check out "Overgreeters Anonymous" scheduled for the October term. Once the dogs are comfortable being touched by strangers, we can combine the concepts of staying at a distance with being touched by new people in the December course, "Putting it together: Novice Ring Ready".
Registration
There are no scheduled sessions for this class at this time. We update our schedule frequently, so please
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Registration will begin at 12:00pm PDT.
For answers to commonly asked questions see our FAQ page.
SILVER LEVEL PILOT PROJECT - In addition to asking GENERAL clarification questions about the class lecture materials, silver students will now have the opportunity to submit two short videos, one minute each, for critique and review. You may submit two questions. Each question MUST have a one minute video attached so the instructor can actually answer a question that they can see. The question must relate to a topic in the class and the video must be a demo of the question. Please see the discussion forum for a detailed explanation - feel free to sign up at bronze, read the explanation, and then come back here to upgrade to silver if that interests you, and if space is available.
If you are interested in a bronze level subscription, you can sign up at any time during the registration period.
Syllabus
Week 1: Building duration stays using impulse control games
Week 2: Adding distractions
Week 3: Touch and more distractions
Week 4: Distance
Week 5: Introducing out of sight stays
Week 6: Combining components
Prerequisites & Supplies
Prerequisites: Dogs need to know how to down, sit or stand on cue. Dogs will need to be able to move into the 2on 2off behavior if you want to work on stays with your agility contacts.
Sample Lecture
Should I Stay or Should I Go
Week 1: Lecture 5: Building Duration with Stay using Impulse control games
Impulse control games are a great way to start building duration into our stays. We will teach the dogs that in order to get the treat, the dog needs to wait for the treat to come to them.
Step 1-
This game is from Susan Garrett's "It's your choice" game. My fist is closed with one treat in it and I have several treats in my opposite hand. When my puppy accidentally backs away from my closed fist, I say my reward word and deliver the treat from the opposite hand. The key to this game is to that your arm with the treat in it is like a tree. It doesn't move. The more it moves the more dogs typically think bumping it will work. Repeat this step until the dog isn't touching your fist with their nose between reward deliveries.
Step 2-
Once the dog is eager to ignore the treat in the closed fist because the dog knows the rewards will be coming from the opposite hand, go ahead and open your hand. When the dog dives for the cookie, close your fist. When the dog waits for a moment, reward with the opposite hand. Repeat this step until the dog isn't trying to dive for the treats between reward deliveries.
This is our goal behavior.
Step 3-
Place one cookie in your open hand about 9-12 inches from the dog. When the dog doesn't move towards the treat, deliver the treat to the dog with your delivery reward word. The dog's feet shouldn't move. Put 1 treat in your hand and when the dog doesn't dive for it say your delivery reward word and bring the treat to the dog.
