Step 2 - Building Stay Duration

Prerequisite Skills:

• Marker Word

• Step 1

  • Place Cue (Verbal and/or Hand Signal)

• Criteria Setting

Gear:

1. Treat pouch with treats

2. Place bed

Set Up:

• Environmental Selection: Select/Set-Up an environment where your dog is able to stay focused.

• Use your criteria setting skills to understand how to increase or decrease how difficult/distracting your dog finds the environment so that your dog is able to successfully stay focused on you.

Skill Building:

Components of a Duration Behavior

Any duration behavior has 3 components: The cue to trigger the behavior, the criteria for the behavior, and the termination of the behavior through a release cue

• Cue: The Stay hand signal or verbal cue

• Criteria: Detailed out below

• Release Cue: The cue that tells your dog the behavior is done. Pick 1 - common cues are "Free" and "Break"

Phase 1: Capturing Duration

Early stages of Stay training require very short durations. Durations are so short that we don't even have time to deliver of cue (hand signal or verbal). Our goal here is to start to teach the dog that off any duration of behavior so that we can start to add in our cues.

Build short duration stationary behavior by capturing the following criteria:

Step	Reward Criteria
1	Dog lays down for a fraction of a second
2	Dog stays laying down for 1/2 second
3	Dog stays laying down for 1 second
4	Dog stays laying down for 2 second
5	Dog stays laying down for 3 second

Pro Tip: For dogs who really struggle to maintain a down (or sit) and pop up with you after you give the cue break that the time to focus on building the baseline behavior first so that you can comfortably give the cue and return normal posture.

Once your dog is able to reliable hold the behavior for 3 seconds it's time to implement our Stay cue and Release Cue. Utilize the following sequence to keep communication clear:

• Cue the desired behavior (Sit, Down, Stand, etc.)

• Immediately followed by your Stay cue (hand signal or verbal cue)

  • Some dogs find the hand signal easier. If this is true for your dog you can incorporate the verbal cue later (I'd say once you are able to achieve 15 sec of duration)

• Monitor for the criteria and mark and reward when complete

  • Dog should stay in position for delivery of the reward

• Provide the Release Cue to let them know the behavior is done

  • Common Release Cues include: Free, Break, Done

    • Try to select a word that you don't commonly say. We don't want to accidentally release them during normal speech,

Continue to build criteria with the Stay cue and Release cue incrementally:

Step	Reward Criteria
5	Repeat dog stays laying down for 3 second but utilize stay and release cues
6	Dog stays laying down for 4 second
7	Dog stays laying down for 5 second
8	Dog stays laying down for 6 second
9	Dog stays laying down for 7 second
10	Dog stays laying down for 8 second
11	Dog stays laying down for 9 second
12	Dog stays laying down for 10 second
13	Dog stays laying down for 12 second
14	Dog stays laying down for 15 second
15	Dog stays laying down for 20 second
16	Dog stays laying down for 25 second
17	Dog stays laying down for 30 second
18	Dog stays laying down for 45 second
19	Dog stays laying down for 1 minute
	Repeat the pattern to build duration for the desired target time

Side Note: When building longer duration it can be hard for your dog to do multiple reps in a row. Consider varying the lengths so that you have shorter and longer reps to build duration

• Example: 10 sec, 45 sec, 5 minute, 1 minute, 10 sec, 3 minute, 45 sec, 5 minutes