Your dog by now has mastered Sit and Down.  At this point most owners begin to think about how nice it would be if their dog would hold the Sit or Down position for more than a second.  This is known as “Stay”.  A common mistake in teaching Stay is upping the criteria too much, too quickly. This often happens by the owner adding too much distance and/or time to the Stay.

In Step Two you will be teaching your dog the foundation of Stay or Wait but not necessarily adding the voice cue.  Your dog will learn that holding a position is rewarding and once he understands that, adding the cue will be easy.

When the time comes to add a command choose “Stay” when you will be returning to your dog and releasing them and use “Wait” when you will be calling or asking your dog to do something else.  This separates in the dog’s mind what he should be doing. "Wait" requires him to watch you for further direction. "Stay" tells him you will come back to him without asking for more behaviors.  On Wait you will need to be sure you aren’t allowing your dog to come before you call him.  If he does, you will reposition him and try again.  But before you get to that you will need to focus on building a solid foundation for these behaviors.

300 Peck

Like all behaviors there are many ways to teach Stay or Wait.  The 300 Peck method may be one of the easiest on the owner and dog.  300 Peck refers to an experiment in variable reinforcement involving pigeons.  The researcher taught pigeons to peck a bar for a reward.  Slowly extending the number of pecks between rewards, the researcher was able to train her pigeons to reliably peck the bar 300 times before they were rewarded. This seems like an incredible amount when you consider it would not be unlike your dog being trained to sit 300 times in a row before any reward was given.  However, we expect many “300 Peck” type behaviors from our dogs, often without doing the training it takes to reliably build up to it. Stay is one such behavior.

To begin teaching Stay have your dog in front of or beside you.  Ask your dog to Sit, count to one.  If your dog remains sitting Click and Treat.  If your dog moves, try again.  Once you have been able to  Click for a count of one, count to two the next time.  If your dog stays, Click and Treat then try for a count of three.  If your dog does not Stay go back and start over with a count of one.  Basically you are upping the criteria by one (in this case a count of one or about one second) until your dog doesn’t perform the behavior.  At the point your dog doesn’t perform the behavior or performs the behavior incorrectly such as shifting in place, go back to the beginning and start over.  This takes the guesswork out of building duration on the stays.

300 Peck can also be used to build the distance your dog will stay away from you.  Click for your dog staying with you one step away, two steps away and so on until your dog moves and you have to go back to one.  For now work on time and distance separately - upping the criteria of both at the same time will confuse your dog and cause setbacks in training.

Once you understand this method it can be used on just about any behavior where you want to build reliability.  For example, heeling can be increased one step a time for 300 Peck heeling.  Or if you want to increase the number of Sits between treats increase by one sit between each Click and reward.