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THE DAILY 'STAY'  -  teaching your dog to stay for long periods

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Training information

The life of a working retriever consists for the most part, of long periods of waiting interspersed with bouts of intense excitement and activity. This is especially the case for a 'peg'  or 'picking up' dog. Even a spaniel used mainly for rough-shooting must still learn to be patient. 

Unless you only shoot alone, you will almost certainly wish to talk to friends from time to time with your dog sitting quietly by your side. There will be meeting places, lunch breaks, and other gatherings.  You may well wish at some point to carry out some quiet roost shooting, perhaps sit in a pigeon hide or try a little wildfowling and will need your dog to sit still for sometimes long periods of time.  

If you go beating with your dog there will be gaps between drives, breaks of varying lengths, and sometimes extended waits for drives to begin.  The periods of inactivity, which will inevitably be required from your dog at some point, are however, something that is easily neglected in training.  

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Put a lead on your dog and lead him on to the mat.  You may find it helpful to leave the lead on him to start with.   Tell the dog to sit and let go of the end of the lead.  Now simply behave as though the dog is not in the room.  Carry on eating your breakfast for example and each time the dog attempts to get up immediately say NO to mark his mistake and lead him back onto his mat.   Despite the fact that you have already trained your dog to ‘stay’ outside, you may be surprised at how many times you have to replace him to begin with. 

For the first few days he may try and get up to greet anyone that walks into the room, he may get up when people laugh or move around, he may get up if someone drops something on the floor, or simply when he gets bored.   All this is quite normal.  Remember your routine, say ‘NO’ and reseat the dog, just as you would if your dog 'broke' from the stay in an outdoor training session. 

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'stay' training can be

time consuming

We all teach our dogs to sit and stay during outdoor training sessions, but the long stay is time consuming and if we are honest, quite boring to teach.  It is important that you do not neglect the ‘long stay’ in the field, but there is much that can be done whilst you are at home to aid this training process.  

The daily stay is something you can do indoors with any dog mature enough to cope with the discipline of remaining in one place for extended periods of time.  It is not a suitable training exercise for young puppies.  Most dogs over nine months old who have started their field training, will benefit from and quickly learn to relax during the daily stay (see below for requirements).  

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for the first few days he may try to 'greet' people

Don’t begin this exercise unless you are willing to enforce it without exception.  If you let the dog wander off even once, you will set yourself back severely.   It is not a good exercise to begin during times of stress or disruption in the home as it requires the co-operation of those you live with and in the beginning a good deal of patience.

When the dog is reliable at remaining seated on the mat for at least 15 minutes at a time, you should move the mat to a different place and repeat the process.   If you have trained him to ‘stay’ on his mat in the kitchen try carrying out the procedure whilst the family are watching television in the evening, or you could place the mat in the garden whilst the children are having a game, or whilst you are gardening. He could even watch you decorating or mending the car.  Build up to 30 minutes in a number of different locations before you allow anyone to touch the dog. 

A helpful aid to ‘stay’ training in this way is a physical marker for the dog of the ‘place’ you want him to remain.   Some trainers use the word ‘place’ as a command for the long sit using a mat.  One of the reasons for this is that during the really long stay, a dog may well lie down. This is not unreasonable if he is to be left for long periods of time, as sitting still will eventually become physically uncomfortable for him. 

If you teach your dog a separate ‘down’ command, as ‘obedience’ handlers do, using the sit command for the long stay could cause confusion. Strictly speaking the dog who lies down after being commanded to sit is disobeying the ‘sit’.  If you have trained a 'down' command you might prefer to use this, or the word 'place' from the beginning of this exercise.

Most gundog trainers however,  don’t teach a ‘down’ command and they don’t mind if the dog ‘lies down’ on the long stay. 

It will help you get into a routine and remember to practice if you link the daily stay with some regular domestic activity.  Eating your breakfast for example.   Even if your dog live out in a kennel you can still do this.  

this is a tempting time

The next step is to help the dog understand that the ‘stay’ still applies when he is stroked, greeted by visitors, and even given an edible treat.   He must not move even when the person stroking him or treating him leaves.  This is a particularly tempting time and you will need to be vigilant in replacing the dog if he moves.   Ask anyone paying attention to the dog to immediately cease all contact with him if he moves.  You must then reseat him and he should be ignored for the rest of that session. 

Finishing the session

If your dog lives in the house, you will need a very specific ‘release’ procedure so that he knows the session is ended and he is no longer ‘under orders’.  Always return to him on his mat, praise him for succeeding, and to begin with, put him on the lead and lead him away from the mat before releasing him

using a 'place' mat

can be helpful

Before beginning this exercise the dog must be familiar and comfortable with a basic three-minute stay in your training sessions.  This ‘stay’ should have been ‘proofed' against simple distractions such as the handler moving around the dog, and another person walking past him. It is unfair to expect a dog who does not understand the sit command fully, to cope with this training procedure.  Anyone who is going to be in the room or who may enter it during the stay must be prepared to follow your instructions

Instruct all members of the family to completely ignore the dog.  They must not touch him or speak to him at all to begin with. Tell them that they will be able to interact with the dog in a few days when he understands the new rule.  The rule is that when you say 'sit'  - he must sit still in the place you have left him until you tell him he can move, no matter what is going on around him

Shrinking the mat

 The mat can be very helpful in teaching dogs to stay whilst you go out of sight.  Not only does it help as a psychological aid to the dog, but also serves to confirm to you, that he hasn’t moved at all.  

Once the training is well established you can begin to shrink the mat.  .  The mat has now become a symbol or marker for the dog to help him remember his new training, it does not matter that he does not fit on it any more, it is simply a ‘comfort cue’ to help him until the training is quite reliable.   We can shrink that cue slowly until it is insignificant.

Start to cut bits off the mat each day.   It should gradually get smaller and smaller, until it is tiny and then it can be dispensed with completely.  When you still have a tiny square of the mat left, you may want to take the dog and ‘mat’ with you out in safe  public places  (to your local hostelry perhaps) and reinforce the training there.  A summer spent with this training can pay great dividends when the shooting season starts and your dog sits quietly where you have left him whenever you are occupied or relaxing with your friends

anyone involved must follow your instructions

Choose a place in the middle of the bustle of family life, your kitchen perhaps and select a place for your dog to sit.  Mark this place with a ‘mat’ of some description.  This should be something easy to carry about and which you can eventually cut into pieces.  If your dog lives indoors, it should not be his regular basket or sleeping place but will be a portable surface that you can move from room to room.

 Choose a specific time   - mealtime for example  - and commit to carrying out this procedure at this time each day for the next couple of weeks.  A time when other family members are about is ideal.