Stand/Stay
Now that your dog has been introduced to the stand position, it is time to build duration in the stand with the stand stay. Most of our practical uses of the stand (examination at the vet, grooming, etc) require a prolonged stand, so the stand/stay will come in handy in real life situations.
- Place the dog in a stand in heel position.
- You can use the manual stand or cookie stand instructions to get them into the initial stand. If you haven’t practiced enough cookie stands to get them to pop up reliably, use the manual stand.
- Return leash to walking position. It is important that there is not tension on the leash when you start the stay portion of the exercise.
- Place palm of left hand in front of dog’s face and give the command to “stay.”
- Step off with your right foot and walk in a counterclockwise circle around your dog.
- I often think about rotating my right shoulder slightly in as I step forward to encourage my dog to stay put and not follow me.
- If your dog breaks position, replace them in the stand and continue the circle around them, repeating as many times as necessary.
- Stop when you return to heel position (your left pant seam should line up with their front legs).
- Praise your dog.
- Complete an “Exercise Finish”
In the video below, you can see Ryan complete a successful stand/stay with Fritz, using the manual stand to get him into position initially.
In the following video, Seamus tries to follow Ryan around as he makes a circle. Notice that Ryan replaces him into the stand twice in the same rotation, without returning to heel position to start the exercise over. You might have to replace your dog into the stand quite a bit more than this when they first start.
Continue practicing until you can reliably circle the dog and return to heel position. Once they can do a single circle well, add duration, distance and distraction to the stand/stay slowly. Remember that as we increase difficult, we only want to change one variable at a time.