Balls up in obedience training

I have been training Stig basic commands and working on them ever since I brought him home, and after researching training methods and tips I came across a section about not using words that are used for another command, in particular when Stig jumps on the sofa I say "down", when he has something in his mouth he shouldn't have I was going to order him to "drop", so when it came to getting Stig to lay down "drop" and "down" were already taken, so I use the command "lay". I'm guessing now you already know what my problem is, when out walking Stig sits on the kerb when waiting to cross the road, if it takes a while for traffic to clear he goes to stand and I tell him again "sit", today however I tell him "stay", you guessed it, Stig lays down. This now presents a problem as I wanted to start working on his recall some more, when I let him off the lead I have him "sit", he will sit until I remove the lead and I tell him "free" to which he dashes off and has his lead free time, when I call him he approaches and sits in front of me, but after praising him he waits a few seconds and runs off, I want to work on him staying put until I tell him "free" rather than him pulling to get away whilst I hold his collar, so after all that the question I need help with is, do I retrain him to "drop" instead of lay or will this confuse him, (drop is not used as in the end I opted for "release" when he has something he shouldn't), or do I command he "wait" rather than "stay", I actually feel bad that I overlooked this and now he's confused bless him

Confused myself reading that!

I use a lot of hand signals with Moo, also her basic words are just sit, stay, leave, down and No.

Sorry not to be much help! Xx

i have always trained my dogs to drop with the word dead

Oh, bugger!

Right. Drop means leave, down means get off, is that right?

I'm confused!

Apologies, I had a feeling it would be difficult to take all that in, his commands I use are...

Sit

Come

Lay-lay down

Release-Let go of whatever is in your mouth ie kids toys, kids sleeves, kids arms, the wifes labrador, and now used in play with tug toy and tennis balls, I don't know why it ended up being "release" rather than "let go" it just seemed to work immediately and stuck.

The problem I now have is when I command "Stay" he must hear the word "lay" because he immediatley lays down, so do I change the command "lay" to "drop" to make him lay down or find another word for the command "Stay"? Reading that back it still looks confusing so I gues I should just ask is there another word I can use for "stay" because I screwed up.

could you not train "wait" for "stay"? i use wait with Lola when walking on lead, so she doesnt pull either into traffic or to other people if we are stood waiting.

Just use 'No', much easier for things he shouldn't be doing and 'drop' when you want him to leave a toy.....

asa-james wrote:could you not train "wait" for "stay"? i use wait with Lola when walking on lead, so she doesnt pull either into traffic or to other people if we are stood waiting.

This is what I was thinking rather than change a command he's familiar with, he follows all his current commands really well I just don't have one to make him stay put, sometimes when playing games with him it would be helpfull if I could get him to stay still but the second I move he follows, he even follows me around the house it's cute but sometimes annoying, obviously "stay" is out the question but "wait" should be easy enough.

Why use the word "Stay" at all? If you tell him to sit, make sure he doesn't move until you release him - same with down (lay) or stand.

If it's confusing, then just drop the word completely. You can use wait, but why bother? When I co-ran a training club many years ago we always taught that the commands "Sit", "Down" or "Stand" were really short versions of "Sit/Down/Stand there and don't you dare move until I tell you otherwise", so "Stay" wasn't needed unless there's an emergency - for example if your dog suddenly goes to run across the road etc.

Caryll wrote:Why use the word "Stay" at all? If you tell him to sit, make sure he doesn't move until you release him - same with down (lay) or stand.

If it's confusing, then just drop the word completely. You can use wait, but why bother? When I co-ran a training club many years ago we always taught that the commands "Sit", "Down" or "Stand" were really short versions of "Sit/Down/Stand there and don't you dare move until I tell you otherwise", so "Stay" wasn't needed unless there's an emergency - for example if your dog suddenly goes to run across the road etc.

Good point and I will certainly take this on board, so say for instance I call him and he comes to me, he instinctively sits as I've always had him sit on recall, I want him to stay there until I say "Free", do I just keep telling him "sit" if he tries to move before I allow him to? It makes sense to be honest and saves the extra word. The difficult part will be making him stay sat while I walk away, may need another pair of hands for that one.

My brother will tell his springer to sit and put his food in front of him , then walk into another room for a wee while , then when he returns he will still be waiting . At that point he will say "ok eat up" ... I could never do that with our Stafford , well not for that long anyway.
Good luck with the training , it sounds like you are doing great :-)

stig wrote: so say for instance I call him and he comes to me, he instinctively sits as I've always had him sit on recall, I want him to stay there until I say "Free", do I just keep telling him "sit" if he tries to move before I allow him to? It makes sense to be honest and saves the extra word. The difficult part will be making him stay sat while I walk away, may need another pair of hands for that one.

Yes, that's it. You'll find that gradually you'll have to say sit less often as he realises that it means "sit-there-and-don't-move-until-I-tell-you-otherwise'.

The trick with any 'stay' exercise is to build it up gradually. So tell him to sit by your side and then just walk one step forward & face him. Stand still for a couple of seconds & return to his side. Ant time he looks like moving just repeat the word - if necessary go back & start again. Don't get impatient! He'll fail, that doesn't matter as long as you're consistent. Gradually build up the distance & time over days or even weeks until you're 100% happy that he understands what's required. Then you can start to go out of sight. For that one you might need somebody else around to tell you if he moves.

I would probably just use wait, though to be honest its quite easy to retrain word commands if you also have hand commands in place as well, as they will see the hand command and know the movement just need to associate the new command word with that movement/behavior.

We had taught Molly spin and circle to sin clockwise and anti clockwise, but when we went agility training they wanted us to retrain the command to right and left an she soon picked up on what was needed.

stig wrote:

Caryll wrote:Why use the word "Stay" at all? If you tell him to sit, make sure he doesn't move until you release him - same with down (lay) or stand.

If it's confusing, then just drop the word completely. You can use wait, but why bother? When I co-ran a training club many years ago we always taught that the commands "Sit", "Down" or "Stand" were really short versions of "Sit/Down/Stand there and don't you dare move until I tell you otherwise", so "Stay" wasn't needed unless there's an emergency - for example if your dog suddenly goes to run across the road etc.

Good point and I will certainly take this on board, so say for instance I call him and he comes to me, he instinctively sits as I've always had him sit on recall, I want him to stay there until I say "Free", do I just keep telling him "sit" if he tries to move before I allow him to? It makes sense to be honest and saves the extra word. The difficult part will be making him stay sat while I walk away, may need another pair of hands for that one.

For teaching him to stay, just do it one step at a time. In my case with Loki, I think I did it one cm at a time but it builds up in the end.

Thanks Sarah he is doing really well with his training, to be honest the key has litterally been time and patience, the last week has seen quite a big improvement including walking to heel and if I'm honest the improvements have only come this quick as I was made redundant so have more time to spend with him, I have enough cash to get me through 6 month so I decided rather than panic and rush into another job I'd take a few month out to train Stig more often and get some work done around the house, up to now I've managed to hang 1 door as Stig has always given me a legitimate distraction
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Thanks Caryll I will give this a go this afternoon and see how we get on over the next couple of week, thanks John and Tara will gradually work on the gap and hopefully have him stay put until I say otherwise, not going to bother changing existing commands as the ones he has work really well and Caryll has pointed out that another command isn't neccesary anyway as one command should achieve what I want him to do