SIT - STAY!

Should be pretty easy, right?! Right! That's what this segment is about - creating the beginnings to a reliable sit-stay. We need it not because it's an important part of heeling work - it's not, but it does make sense from a practical 'everyday life' perspective, and it's also necessary for later steps of focus and proofing work we'll be doing.

If your dog already has one, this segment should be relatively painless. If your dog doesn't, let's begin putting the work in on it so we can confidently move into more sophisticated training. 

Keep the following in mind:

• Use your duration marker/bridge to encourage your dog to stay in behavior. Make sure you mark with your duration bridge prior to returning to your dog to feed.
• As you'll see in the second video, ultimately we want the ability to walk around our dog in a circle while they continue to honor their sit stay. This means we'll be marking with our duration marker at various places as we circle our dog. Always return to the front of your dog to feed them in place.
• Approximate carefully - meaning don't ask too much for the learning dog. You won't be able to create and proof a reliable sit-stay in one session so take your time, keep your sessions short, and be patient.
• Revisit the videos to see the pieces you should be working on as you continue to make progress

*Again, notice during this sit-stay drill that after marking with my duration bridge "Good", I always return to the front / center line of El to feed him. This gives him less reason to shift or pivot to follow me as I circle him.

 3 min 35 sec

Teaching the sit and the beginning stages of a stay should be pretty easy. The real opportunity lies in the proofing training. To make sure the behavior is strong, we want to practice it in many different situations, contexts, and in the face of minor distractions. This video illustrates some work Anthony and his pitbull, Big Mac, did to further solidify Mac's understanding of a sit-stay.

This video is a bit longer than many of the others in this course, but there's some good coaching tips and Anthony and Big Mac make some common mistakes as well as some good progress. You'll pick up some good information by watching it.

ANTHONY AND BIG MAC PROOFING A SIT-STAY

5 min 2 sec