How to Teach Your Labrador to Stay

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village, and today we’re going to talk about training dogs. So we’re going to teach this Labrador retriever how to stay, which is not going to be an easy task because there’s a squirrel off to her right, but that’s okay, she’s relatively calm and attentive to me. So we’re going to attempt this even when there’s a distraction as big as a squirrel flirting his little tail over there. So the first thing I want to do is get Telula into a down; we’re going to work on the stay in the context of the down. She’s completely ignoring me, so I’ll make a little noise, good and reward her when she pays attention to me. So let’s sit, she needs some help here, good, ump, sit, good, down, good, now I want her off of her haunches, good and see how she just responded to me moving over her, and now I want to get her to stay. At Taurus Training we don’t actually use the word stay or hand signal for stay. If that is helpful for you then absolutely do so, but when you give a command that’s what your dog should do until you tell them otherwise. Telula is doing a great job here, even with the squirrel and a bird just flew by, but I’m going to up the ante here a little bit by moving around and creating more distractions. That yawn meant she’s a little nervous and it’s a little hard for her to do this, good girl. So I’m going to continue to treat her for staying on her down, good. Now there I told her good, because she moved, she tried, wanted to get up, and she caught herself which is excellent, good girl. Give her another treat for staying down. My moving back and forth is not a great distraction. So I’ll introduce more distraction. Ump, good, very nice, that is excellent. She caught herself which is wonderful. So see how I moved toward her. I’m just giving her a little signal that I want her to stay down. Also I want her off her haunches, good, Ah, good, good. Now this is an example of how much Labradors want to work with us and for us. They can be easy dogs to train for this reason, but keep in mind that Labs need a lot of energy. A tired dog is a good dog. So it’s a good idea to take your dog out for a nice romp before you start working on the down stay. "