So my sister taught her golden retriever two different "stays".. one she calls "wait" which is a short stay and the hand signal given is one finger (haha… no the pointer :p ) and when the stay is done, you say "break" and the dog can move, etc. The second she calls "stay" and this is an entire hand out flat and you have to release the dog by going back to it.

Now I've been trying to teach this to Basil... but I've only been able to get a few steps away and he either gets up or I say break.. and we haven't really been able to get farther than this. I'm just wondering what everybody says to their dog, what kind of "stay" you have and how you taught it.. any awesome videos that could be used would be great

Only dog I ever got to stay was Topper, and we used the full hand gesture and I think just a perky "all done" for a release. We didn't keep it up too much after obedience I & II classes were completed, but he was always good at a 'wait' in the car, or the door, though I never really "trained" it

I use wait when I'm cominig back to them and stay when I call them to me afterwards.

If you do the Relaxation Protocol, you'll end up with very nice stays in all sorts of distractions. I actually don't use the word stay or wait. I tell Z to "sit" (or down) and I expect her to remain seated until I release her or do something else. Saying "sit" and then "stay" is redundant. I normally use a sit (sit/stay) at the start line in agility, so I use it quite a bit in that context. You can see an example here under Lead Out:

https://www.basenji.org/BasenjiU/Activities/Agility/Your/AManuevers.html

A similar command in my house would be "Mat". She'll run to her mat, where ever it is, and down.

@agilebasenji:

I tell Z to "sit" (or down) and I expect her to remain seated until I release her or do something else. Saying "sit" and then "stay" is redundant.

YES! Why don't most people realize this? Personally I use "wait" and a hand gesture when I am out and about, or if he is ahead of me just the command "wait", which means he should allow me to catch up. Stay is more formal. I use "wait" a bit like the herding people use "lie down" (they just want the dog to slow down and take pressure off the sheep, not necessarily actually drop, although some do).

As far as training it, a little bit at a time is good. Reward only when he stays/waits until you release him. Breaking too soon = repeat the exercise. But baby steps…...stay with him, then take one step away, when that works, two steps. A clicker might make things more clear.....(but then the click signals a release)

Very interesting variations… I like the idea of using a mat. Is there a youtube video for this anywhere? I'll have to look. Would come in handy to bring the mat with us to the kitchen, friends house, etc. great idea!

I also use a mat in the kitchen. He must lie on it until I release him to have his dinner. Very easy to teach "mat" with a clicker…....I think it took me ten minutes.

I don't make a difference between staying till I say he can move again and staying till I'm back with him. I have one command for that (wait + handsignal) and he can move again when I say the word 'OK' (I say that pretty much for to end every command I have given him). That can be when I'm then standing next to him again, or when I'm 20meters away from him. Staying in one spot is staying in that spot, don't think you need to make a different in going away or comming back.

Teaching it is simple. Just let him sit, and put his food bowl a bit in front of him and let him wait a couple of seconds. Put the bowl a bit further each time and after a while, when he gets what he is supposed to do, start doing it with treats wherever you are. In the yard, in the house, on walks… If he likes toys, also use those. Throw them away and let him wait before letting him going after them. If you unleash him, let him stay before he can run off to have fun... You can use that exercise for so many things. And once he get's it, start giving the command from a distance and slowly increase that distance.

I find that one of the simplest commands to teach a dog, just because you can practice that all day, with allmost everything.

@basilboy7:

Very interesting variations… I like the idea of using a mat. Is there a youtube video for this anywhere? I'll have to look. Would come in handy to bring the mat with us to the kitchen, friends house, etc. great idea!

it's actually covered in the CU book in conjunction with the Relaxation Protocol. (There's also 2 different CU dvd's. The first one covers mat work)

Here's a video for Day 1 of the RP:

you can even shape how calm/relaxed the dog is as shown in this video:

It's nice b/c you can then send your dog to a mat from anywhere. That's pretty much how I taught Z to weave. A 6 pole set in the hallway in winter with me and the food dish at one end of the hall and the mat at the other. (there wasn't enough room for me to go beside her with the poles in the hallway) For some reason people are really impressed with this. The conformation people (not just basenji people) were easily impressed by me being able to send my basenji to her mat from just 10ft away. I think it would be easy to train her to do 50feet (or more) run to mat if I was inclined. She loves the mat work.

@eeeefarm:

YES! Why don't most people realize this? Personally I use "wait" and a hand gesture when I am out and about, or if he is ahead of me just the command "wait", which means he should allow me to catch up.

Beats me.

I have used "wait" most often with the boys as I was getting them out of their car crates. "Wait" means stop for a second and then we can do what you want to do. I did Crate Games with Zest, so she does not need the verbal cue to not dash out of her crate, but needs a cue to exit her crate. SOOOOO much better. I'll do that with my next dog for sure. And then combine the Crate Games with the reorient out of the crate as covered in CU. Ideal. (And I've been a bit slack with that, as you know, behavior are dynamic and get better or get worse.)

I don't use "stay" either. The challenge with that is that everyone else around me does so they typically say "stay" to my dogs. As long as they say "sit" first it's probably fine but the dogs won't respond to "stay" by itself. I use "wait" informally as "please stand by for further instructions". Usually we use it at doorways and when feeding the dogs and then use a release cue to let them go. Although we're starting to put those particular situations as default waits without a verbal cue (it's an environmental cue in this case).

@agilebasenji:

I did Crate Games with Zest, so she does not need the verbal cue to not dash out of her crate, but needs a cue to exit her crate. SOOOOO much better. I'll do that with my next dog for sure. And then combine the Crate Games with the reorient out of the crate as covered in CU. Ideal. (And I've been a bit slack with that, as you know, behavior are dynamic and get better or get worse.)

Haven't done Crate Games, but my command is "kennel", which means go in there and stay until told otherwise. In practice I don't make him wait long. I smiled at your last comment…....yes, behavior are dynamic, worse definitely happens when we don't pay attention. My horses will gradually get sloppy until I wake up and say "hey, you know better than that!"

I take training tips wherever I find them, and I am very fond of Chuck Eisenmann's methods, although I could never approach his ability, but I do like to "converse" with my dog and let him find the meaning in my conversation, e.g. I say something like "gee, I would give anything for a frog right now", which if he is paying attention results in him bringing me his plush froggy. Another time I might "kill for a red bone" and have one duly presented to me. This works best just before his dinner time!

To relate this to the current discussion, I might indeed give the command "mat", or I might conversationally say "a dog that wants dinner might want to be seated on his mat", and get the same result either way.

Mine is "You better get in da kennel" in kind of a gruff tone (think movie 30s era gangster speak) . She goes running off to get in da kennel, opens the door and dashes in. It's a great game and we always play it at dinner time since she'd "help" everyone else with dinner. (The boyz are almost 14 and 15 and Z as an almost 5 year old can inhale her food much much faster, so she's kenneled at dinner time.)

@agilebasenji:

it's actually covered in the CU book in conjunction with the Relaxation Protocol. (There's also 2 different CU dvd's. The first one covers mat work)

Here's a video for Day 1 of the RP:

I use a down as my default behavior as this golden is, even though the protocol has "sit".

you can even shape how calm/relaxed the dog is as shown in this video:

It's nice b/c you can then send your dog to a mat from anywhere. That's pretty much how I taught Z to weave. A 6 pole set in the hallway in winter with me and the food dish at one end of the hall and the mat at the other. (there wasn't enough room for me to go beside her with the poles in the hallway) For some reason people are really impressed with this. The conformation people (not just basenji people) were easily impressed by me being able to send my basenji to her mat from just 10ft away. I think it would be easy to train her to do 50feet (or more) run to mat if I was inclined. She loves the mat work.

Thanks for the links! It's so amazing how well the dogs can be trained with clicker training… I'll be picking up mine tomorrow and I can't wait to get my book.

http://www.clickertraining.com/node/167

Great place to start is this link.

Clicker training is really fun - play really. You're going to have a blast! If I pull out the clicker and put something new on the floor, Z will do all sorts of interactions with it. Fun to see those little brains working.

Wait at our house is not a stay really. It means that the dog is not allowed to move from one area into another past a threshold that I control, like at a door for example. It is used to keep them from charging out of the house or the car and so on. They are allowed to move freely in the area they are in, but not past the point I tell them to wait at. I teach this by having them on lead and and walking up to a threshold (a door is the easiest), when we get there the dog is told "Watson, wait" if he tries to pass I use my body to block him from the area. I do this until he stops putting forward pressure on me and looks to me for direction then I praise and release with a cue (we use the word okay) and he is allowed to move through. Once the command is solid he should wait for your cue to pass even without a leash when he is told to wait. No need for treat rewards with this command as the release to go forward is it's own reward.

Stay in our house means you stay where I told you to without moving until you are released. So we do sit stays and will eventually train down stays as well. The important part with teaching stays is to work on duration and distance separately. So you can work on making the dog stay longer in one session and on moving away further from the dog in another, but not at the same time. If your dog stays well for lets say two minutes and you are trying to increase time and he pops up at 2 minutes and 30 seconds that means you are increasing the time increments by too much and have to work up in smaller increments…same goes for distance.

I also like clickers...we use them here as well.

My sister suggested that we use the clicker on each other to get an idea of the timing. We decided it was a little like the "hot/cold" game where you hide something and then the only input you give the searcher is whether they are hot or cold, depending on how near they are. Except with the clicker, you only say when they're getting hot

But if the timing seems hard, practice on a human. It can be hilarious.

As far as the "command" words we say in our house: we have SIT, TOUCH (which is an essential one, in my opinion), MANNERS (which is a complicated sounding thing that basically is what we use to get two at once to stop crowding a doorway or staircase and just means "back up and sit, both of you", HERE, DOWN, NOW (that's our jackpot recall word), QUIT, and LEAVE IT.

That's aside from silly tricks like gimme your hand and so forth

The two we have are just turned 1 and not quite 2, and so we work a lot on impulse control and crowd control. Yes, two young basenjis is a crowd.

i think this has been a great thread. it is ALWAYS a good idea to clarify exactly what you think the cues (commands) mean. Without that clarity, it is difficult to raise your criteria and have a good performance from the dog. And it is good to review what you think the cue means, even for those who have been at training for a while.

I started using wait and stay as two different commands and then discovered the obedience instructor at the local training center also teaches these as two. Wait means don't go out the door until I'm ready to let you out (even if the door is open) or wait and let me catch up etc. Stay (sit stay, down stay) means stay exactly where you are (for however long even if forever) until I tell you to release.
Wait is initially taught at the door, and if the dog tries to move ahead, you close (not slam) the door on him/her (you don't really need a clicker for this one but it helps too). Every time the dog tries to go through the door you close it until s/he learns to wait. And it doesn't take long. My new pup learned it after only 3 attempts to get out the door. I don't know why but it translates to other situations almost immediately. Even though there is no "door" when we're out walking my dogs will stop and wait (when a bicyclist or jogger is coming past for example) until I say okay.
Now stay-forever is a much harder command to teach IMHO, even with the clicker. As soon as I started to wander away my dog would bolt and it took agility classes to finally get Gossy to stay as I walked away. Maybe because she knew she would have fun shortly if she stayed. And with Teddy, so far I've only been able to move a few steps away before he releases on his own. It takes a lot more practice, practice, practice and patience, patience, patience.

@wizard:

Now stay-forever is a much harder command to teach IMHO, even with the clicker. As soon as I started to wander away my dog would bolt and it took agility classes to finally get Gossy to stay as I walked away. Maybe because she knew she would have fun shortly if she stayed.

I think it makes it easier if there is an obvious high value reward coming at the end of the exercise. Not food, necessarily. "Do what I want, then you will get to do what you want" is a great incentive! "Forever" can be a hard one, however, and I don't think many dogs in practice are going to achieve this. I came closest with my Border Collie, who performed a (completely accidental on my part) two hour stay. Somehow I just can't see a Basenji doing that!!:)