How to Teach Your Dog to Obey the "Stay" Command

Series Summary

Teaching your pet to do the most basic commands such as sit, lie down and heel can be a difficult challenge. There are many methods to training your dog that basically have the same strategies of positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. When the dog obeys the command, it gets an award or treat, thus reinforcing the obedience of the command. Working dogs have to learn difficult commands such as herding animals or protecting animals. While your dog may not need to learn how to herd or protect other animals it does need to learn certain commands such as come, sit, and stay to a name a few.

Learn from dog training expert Elise McMahon as she teaches and demonstrates how to train a dog to stay in this free online video series. Learn tips and techniques such as introducing the stay command, using food as a reward, working gradually, using teaching aids, adding distractions, teaching leave it, adding greater distance, proofing the stay, and troubleshooting problems in these video clips.

This series is an Equilibrio Films production.

Video Transcript

" Hi! This is Elise McMahon for Expert Village and today we are talking about how to teach your dog a reliable stay. If you would like to find out more about my services, you can visit my website at canineheadstart.com. So we are going to start off with the question what is a “stay?” What does it mean? Stay is when you ask your dog to be in a position and hold that position until you release them. Stay is different than wait. Wait is a pause in action. You might be walking down the street and meet somebody you want to say “Hi” to. You ask your dog to wait, which means you want them to pause in what they are doing while you talk. In this situation you don’t care if the dog remains standing or if the dog put themselves into a sit or if they put themselves into a down. You are not requiring them to hold a specific position you are just asking them to pause. Stay is different because it actually means you want them to hold that particular position until you release them."