Good morning!
This week I really wanted to focus on training Winnie to “stay.” She already does a pretty good job at waiting until we say “okay” when we give her food. But I thought it was necessary to practice having her “stay” when we walk away or even outside where there’s more distractions. I looked on the internet to see how I should approach this task and found a really great resource online.
To begin, I decided on the words “stay” and “okay,” as my command and release words. I then told Winnie to sit, I gave her the command of “stay,” and then I immediately gave her the release word of “okay,” as the article said to do. We practiced that a few times until she linked the two words together. Unfortunately, I was not able to get this on video as it was very quick and she was a little bit hyper!
I then moved on by creating some distance. I commanded Winnie to “stay,” and then I took a step back and said “okay.” We kept doing this until she was able to do it successfully and then I took more steps back each time.
A few days after practicing these steps inside, we moved outside into the backyard to try with distractions. The first few tries were very difficult and Winnie had trouble listening. There were a few times that she was able to focus and “stay” without any problems, but it’s definitely still a work in progress!