How to Train Your Small Dog to Stay

Video Transcript

Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village, and today we’re going to talk about how to train a small dog. Now it’s time to teach this little Mi-Ki, Rico how to stay. Now this is the young pup, and his attention span is not too long, so we don’t want to make extraordinary demands. But this is a bright little pup; this Mi-Ki can learn to stay. Right now he’s what I call a popcorn dog. Every time I ask him to sit, his rear end pops right back up. So I want to make sure that I give reinforcement for every little stay I get. Rico, good, good. Now I’ve got to tell him, give him the sit command first, sit, good. I’m going to wait a couple of seconds before he gets the treat. Uh, Oh! here comes a dog. Now I’m feeding him food because a huge distraction is going by, and I want to set him up to succeed. The dog is just about to pass, okay, okay. So I want to release Rico before I set him up to fail, by letting him to decide when he wants to release the stay. Now you notice that I didn’t use the word stay earlier. At Taurus Training we don’t use the word stay. The stay is inherent in command, but if you want to use the word stay that is perfectly all right. A lot of people do, and a lot of people like to associate a hand signal with it also. Sit, ump, there’s jumping again, give him the treat. Alright, here is where I want to give him the treat again, before he gets, good, too distracted… now there he looked at me, okay, that was excellent. Now, right there he got up, and before I released him, so I said the word “okay” simultaneously with his bottom coming up. So at least I’m setting him up to succeed by teaching him that the release is associated with getting up… Sit, good, again I’m waiting a little bit longer before he gets the treat, okay, and I’m using a little body language to show him that “okay” is the release, sit, good, good, excellent. When your dog checks in with you like that, be sure to give him a lot of reinforcement. Good, okay… sit, good. Now little Rico is already sitting just to a hand signal, that’s outstanding, and I’m getting longer and longer stays just within this two minutes training period. Good, okay, be patient with your puppy. It takes a while for them to learn to stay, but they can do it. This little Mi-Ki sure did.

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