I see it happen so very often. People ask their dog to ‘stay’ and their dog pops right up into a stand or sees a distraction and jumps up to go investigate. Or they repeat ‘stay’ over and over and over again to their dog. And their dog remains in position if for no other reason than to succumb to the pressure or avoid any kind of negative outcome, should it decide to get up.
Remember, being still when there are SO many more interesting things to do, see and smell is just not something that comes naturally for dogs. It is up to your as your dog’s teacher to make learning fun, clear, and as simple as needed to help your student succeed. This means keeping the lessons short (so that you and your dog can be totally focused on each other), breaking the lessons down into small steps or approximations leading toward your final goal, and using high value reinforcers.
‘Stay’ is in essence a self-control exercise. Your expectation is that your dog remains stationary until released. After teaching whatever body position that is (sit, stand, or down for example), there are three criteria to work on separately first – duration, distraction and distance. When you are working on one criteria, lower the others to help your dog succeed (as an example, while you may have worked up to your dog staying in a ‘down’ position for 20 seconds as you take 5 steps away but when you add in a distraction, greatly lower the distance by being next to your dog and lower your duration by marking and reinforcing quickly). Your release cue should be taught separately with high value reinforcers.
With teaching stay, it is also very important to remember your role as your dog’s advocate and avoid asking your dog to remain stationary in the presence of something scary or dangerous. ‘Staying’ in that circumstance would be taking away one of your dog’s defense mechanisms (flight) and very well may be using flooding. Flooding is a form of training in which the animal is exposed to an aversive stimulus with no possibility of escape until the stimulus no longer arouses anxiety or fear. But the level of anxiety and discomfort it causes the animal in the process can actually serve to cause apathy, aggression, and heightened anxiety, as flooding forces the animal to adopt different copying mechanisms to ensure safety and survival.
As always…have fun, be fair, and teach with clarity.
