How to teach 'Stay' and 'Wait'
The stay and the wait command can seem to be the same, but I believe it is best for you to teach your dog both. It is the difference between calm and chaos.
The stay command is used to tell your dog to not move from where they are and that they are not to move until you return.
The wait command is used to tell your dog not to move right now but to hold on for another command or a release word.
The stay and the wait commands will require patients on your end, you must work in small steps to build up the strong working commands.
Please do not rush these.
Stay
What you’ll need:
- A quiet room/place with little to no distractions to start with
- Some small tasty treats
- and time
- either a clicker or just your voice (whichever you prefer)
While teaching this, if you are away from your dog and they move then do not reward, simply return and ask them to sit/down and cut down on the amount of steps and work back up again.
How To
- Start with your dog in either the sit position or the down position and stand in front of them.
- Now giving them a hand signal (I suggest the ‘stop’ sign with the palm of your hand facing the dog) and put one of your feet backwards, and go with it but don’t move your other foot, do this for just a second and bring your foot back and reward your dog (so long as your dog hasn’t moved)
- Repeat step 2 a few times, then take your other foot back as well, so you are one step away from your dog, then go straight back and reward. Your dog its now staying when you take one step away and come back.
- Stick with just the one step for the time being, as we are now going to introduce the command word ‘stay’.
- Give your dog the hand signal, say ‘stay’ and then take a step backwards, wait a second, go back, praise and reward. Repeat this a few times.
- As your dog is getting more comfortable with this, wait a big longer before going back. Remember to build this up slowly so you don’t overwhelm your dog.
- Continue giving the hand signal and saying ‘stay’ and add in another step, and continue to grow the distance and time.
Wait
What you’ll need:
- A quiet room/place with little to no distractions to start with
- Some small tasty treats
- and time
- either a clicker or just your voice (whichever you prefer)
While teaching this, if you are away from your dog and they move then do not reward, simply return and ask them to sit/down and cut down on the amount of steps and work back up again.
How To
- Start with your dog in either the sit position or the down position and stand in front of them.
- Give your dog a hand signal (I suggest like this), say ‘wait’ and take a step back.
- Wait just a second to start with and then give your dog a command like ‘come’ or a release word like ‘Okay’.
- Your dog should come to you, so praise and reward.
- Repeat steps 1-4 a few times, slowly increasing the time waiting by a couple of seconds.
- Once your dog is comfortable with this you can start adding more steps and increasing the time waiting more.
- Remember not to increase things to fast, you don’t want to overwhelm your dog, and ruin all you built up with them.
- If your dog moves while being told to wait don’t say anything, simply take your dog back to where they were, get them to sit/down again, and start again, dropping either the amount of steps or amount of time.
Important notes:
- Don’t practice anything for to long as your dog will get bored and the skill will become weaker. so make practices short but regular.
- Make sure when you say ‘okay’ it is in a happy voice
Any questions? Don’t hesitate to ask!