Oh My Stay...

Well this month kind of got away from me - no surprise there with everything that is going on at the moment. But now I feel like a slacker. Luckily, Monday doesn't really care :).

I went back and started at the very beginning with Monday and also decided to change my stay verbal cue to avoid any further confusion. Since I was a horrible trainer this month, we are still working on Stay at a very short distance.

BUT...

She is MUCH better on the movement distractions which is what killed us before. So we are building {my} movement at a short distance with varying duration and hopefully eventually I will be able to walk all the way around the ring with her staying in a sit position in the center. Goals - we have Goals!! :)

Ironically, she is fine with me doing a regular Novice level stay - where you leave your dog and walk about 30 feet away and turn and face them for a minute. It's the whole walking all the way around the ring thing that scares her. I imagine she thinks I am going to leave her in the middle of the ring - now I don't know what she is really thinking but that is what her facial expressions say :(.

Here is one of our early practice sessions, you can see how in tune to my movement she is. I lean one way and she mirrors me, which is great in some circumstances but not so much for the stay. For these sessions I am still clicking and rewarding her even though she moves her front feet and a few times she scoots. As she understands the exercise more I will tighten up my criteria. This is still TONS better than the first time we practiced lol. This is such a hard exercise for her.



The next two videos are also from the same training session and you can see there is some progress with her keeping her butt planted. In these I am only introducing my feet moving a few steps, I have to be careful when I move my arms because those have been cues for targeting and jumping (which she LOVES and it is a high value behavior for her).





I also need to work on making sure I actually tighten my criteria. If I took the time to plan a training session before I started I would be much better at this. But that is something I am still working on :).