Quote:
|
Originally Posted by BostonRott Part of my problem may be that I've never taught/used stay commands, as I find them ambiguous and haven't figured out how to clearly explain them to a dog. When others leave their dog and say "stay," I repeat the position command (sit, down, stand). |
While I agree that stay commands should not be necessary for sit and down stays (though I do think it's nice additional information to share with your teamate...I guess I think about it as a short way of saying "just to let you know this is that thing were you'll be waiting in a line with all the other dogs for us humans to come back"), the stand is a bit different in that you're first asking the dog to get up from a sit (initial "stand" command), then you can move their feet/body into whatever standing position you actually want to leave them in. The trick is that once placed they aren't allowed to move
. One of my herding pals (who's also put multiple UD's on dogs) asks the dog to stand, fixes feet when necessary and then on her departure she commands "freeze". For her dogs "freeze" basically means do not move from where I've placed you until released. I plan to use this command with Breve too, as it feels quite descriptive of the exercise
.
Oops...I was going to add more about how I've trained this, but I see that Judi has now basically explained almost exactly what I do
. Glad to know I'm in good company on this one
.
One more thing...I'd avoid anything other than mild verbal corrections as much as possible on the SFE. I've see WAY too many dogs end up with handler created problems on this exercise, usually caused by lack of patience/pushing the dog to perfection way too quickly (physical/collar corrections in a dog that just doesn't completely get it yet create a worried outlook rather than one of confidence).