Dog Training Tip - Teaching Your Dog To Stay

Monday, November 26th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

Toby was my first puppy. He arrived at our home at just 7 weeks old, nearly two years ago now. It was my responsibility to care for him and ultimately train him to fit into the family. Most puppies are very responsive to training and want to please their owner. Although they are full of energy and find it hard to concentrate at times, training is not always as hard as it may seem. Dogs, like people, learn at their own pace. And so it goes for puppies. Some will get what you are trying to teach them quickly while others will prefer to play or not get it at all. Here is the best dog training tip I can give for dogs that are completely ignoring one command: change the command.

Toby had great difficulty understanding the command to stay, otherwise he was a great little puppy. He would watch you intently and try to please you, wagging his tail as if it was about to come off. As an outgoing and fearless puppy, it was important that he learned how to stay for his own safety. He’d learned his name and how to sit. He’d learned to calm down and understood about house training. So he was an intelligent little dog and it seemed that this dog training tip might help him.

I happened to read this dog training tip in Your Dog magazine. Since Toby ignored the word “stay”, it suggested I try a different word, like “wait.” So, I did. And I didn’t keep repeating it like a stuck record, which I did with “Stay.” Toby thought I was just babbling then, and learned to ignore the word “Stay”.

But with “Wait,” he paid attention. Perhaps it was the strong “t” sound in the second syllable that gained his attention. I also deepened my voice when I said “Wait” which I did not always do with “Stay.” Other words you might want to use are “Stop” or “Pause” if your dog has learned to ignore “Stay”.

This dog training tip is not just limited to teaching the dog to wait, stay, stop or pause. You can take the principle of it and make it fit into your own life. For example, if you have a dog that is teased a lot by kids constantly screaming commands, you might want to teach your dog commands in another language. This way you have more control over your dog. However, the disadvantage is that others cannot give commands to the dog. But if you have a guard dog, this might be exactly what you want.

Dogs are very responsive to commands and they want to be trained. Don’t think that training is cruel or unnatural to a dog. In the wild it would follow a strict set of rules if it was living in a pack. It would be taught these rules as a puppy by the pack leader.

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