Teaching Your Dog to “Stay” the Easy Way

You might have found to be easy to train your dog with all sorts of commands that ask him to perform a certain action but when it comes to teaching your dog to stay, things can be a bit more complicated. After all, we are asking our dog not to move, not to do anything at all.

How to teach your dog to stay

Using an already known action will make it easier on your dog to learn how to “stay” so ask your dog to sit. Now, instead of going ahead and praising him like you would normally do, this time you will want to add the command “stay” in the same way you asked him to sit. As soon as a few seconds have passed and your dog staying in his position, go ahead and praise him or give a small treat.

Try to encourage your dog to stay in position with your body language. When first starting out with this new command, make sure you stand close to your dog so he wont feel the urge to follow you and make it easy to stay in the same position without distractions.

It is very well possible that your dog wont understand what you are asking from him and he will get up. Just go back to the first step and tell him to sit, immediately followed by “stay”. Make sure this time you are not asking him to stay too long so that you can use the praise technique for your dog doing something right, and gradually build up on the amount of time.

Gradually move further away from your dog and ensure that each ‘stay’ lasts a few seconds longer than the last. After mastering the ‘sit and stay’ command, you will be able to then slowly introduce the ‘stay and down’ command, which will mean your dog will lay down when you require him to.