Stay means to not move from a position like sit or down. Ubu is a bit young to have a nice solid stay but we can certainly get him started on it. Stays are broken down into three components when teaching it; duration, distance, and distraction. Working on each component separately in the beginning will given us a much greater chance of success. He's still a baby so, if we were to work on more than one component at a time, we would likely both end up frustrated and he will have learned only to break his stay.
I like to start with duration, which simply means how long he can stay in a position. I find this helps him understand what I'm asking of him.
I start out with a handful of tiny treats. I ask him to sit and say "stay." I then feed him one treat after the other while he is still in his sit. The short intervals between rewards will help him figure out that it pays off to stay in that position.
As he improves, I can decrease the intervals between rewards. Notice, too, that I am delivering the treats to him low and at his level. If I held the treats high, he is likely to break his stay and leap up to try to get the treats. In the beginning, I'm going to get the sessions very short. As he improves, I can make the sessions a little longer.
If he starts to break, just a simple, "No, stay" in a calm voice followed up with a hand signal and praise when he complies. That lets me know that I either wasn't rewarding as often as I needed to, my session was too long, or there is some distraction in the area that we need to eliminate.
We'll start working on distractions and distance a bit later. He's not quite ready for that yet.
But he'll get there!
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