Hi, We are teaching Vanilla 19weeks to stay while sitting. We don't use the word 'stay'. We are trying to follow the instructions from the main site. We get her to sit the originally tried to stream her treats then give a release comand. That worked up to about 4 treats, but she would then get up ready to be released. Could not get past 4. So we changed tacked, and give her one treat for sit and then count in our head to various seconds then give a release comand. Again after a few goes she gets up prior to the release comand. But if we take a step back or 2 etc. And then come back to her to release, this works up to ten seconds. This we will expand as per the training excersises. My concern is that we will get to a similar situation where she will get up prior to the release comand after a few goes. Anyone got any ideas on how to handles this? We obviously have skipped a couple of steps, but just could not understand how streaming the treats did not work, yet put a couple of steps between us does (for now) Thanks for any advise
I don't have any advice re the early release, but just wanted to say that I also had/have issues with Pippa's method - the treat streaming made Xena so bouncy, but slowing down the treats and taking a step back has helped the steadiness. Go figure. I read through old threads and lots of members have taught "implied stays" by taking a step back/sideways etc, then going back to the dog and treating. Maybe the "bounce" is normal in puppies but I worried it was reinforcing a bad habit.
It sounds like a combination of trying to move on too fast and doing too much at once. Most young pups have the attention span of a fruit fly, and so you only want to be doing one or two repetitions in a session. If your puppy is failing, go back a step or two and work up to it again. Make sure that you're sometimes making it super easy; it shouldn't just be getting progressively harder each time, or you can frustrate your puppy. Remember to always start and end on a positive and finish before the puppy is ready to stop, in order to keep enthusiasm high. It sounds like you both might benefit from spending a bit more time playing "no mugging" games, so your pups learn that they only get the treats when they're calm. Do this outside of the stay training, but ensure that you only reward in place, when the bum is on the floor. Even at 2, Shadow can be a bit bouncy because I didn't do enough of this when he was younger. If I have the chance, I'll take some video tomorrow to show you.
I've definitely screwed this up a couple of times I keep to 3x5 minute formal training sessions a day atm, and that's not only training sit/stay either. It's just odd how if I move in to treat her immediately after saying "sit" she'll bounce for the treat, but if I pause before giving her the treat she doesn't. It's very hard to not reward that bounce! I'm already giving her the treat when I realise what I've just done
Thanks @Xena Dog Princess, have the same problem. It is as if she knows we are training stay. Any other time if I ask her to sit she will sit until treat is given. @snowbunny. Have tried to go real slow even by just doing one and she will get up ready for the release treat. Just thought, could this have anything to do with that originaly we never did the stream treating, but gave her a treat then counted for one sec. Released, then 2 sec and so on. This was when she was about 14 weeks etc. Now we are trying to change it? I might be wrong on that...
Hello, I had a struggle too with Millie until I told her sit and stay and threw out kibble on the floor. If she tried to go for it I blocked her with my leg so she couldn't go and told her to sit and stay, if she did I said good and let her go fast to get them. I increased the time everyday of how long she sits and wait to get the kibble. After doing this a week i could make her stay facing me and I could walk back a few steps etc, now after 5 weeks I can get Millie to stay with me walking with my back towards her in the yard when my daughter is playing all over.
Are you marking the sit/stay with a clicker or verbal event market that she understands? Or just treating on the release? It may be that she's associating the treat with moving, rather than with staying if you're not using an event marker.
If you can take a little bit of video to demonstrate the issue, it would be easier to see what's going on.
We use a clicker and marking as she sits. I will try and get a video done when I have an extra pair of hands.
She can be very relaxed at times, like now she will just lie on the floor and the world moves around her. I can even drop a piece of chicken on the floor about a meter away and she won't mive until I tell her. That is what is so frustrating...
How do you event mark a stay? Pippa's method, and what I've read on the forum, doesn't mention a marker. What I understand is you get duration by treating (extending the gaps gradually), then give a release cue and throw the treat away.
I mark when I ask for a sit. If I then follow the method from the main site and stream the treats it does not work to well. If I just give a treat for sitting and then after a few seconds release her with a cue and treat that is OK up to about about 10sec. Maybe I am trying to much at present as on other things she seems To be further along than expected
I'll try some videos tomorrow (today) to demonstrate. It won't be till later because I've been up all night with Willow and my alarm goes off in 30mins. Ugh.
Sorry, I might be way off here but when I was taught how to teach Ella the stay, we rewarded still in position, before the release. I'm not sure if this is different because we use a "stay" cue but we would ask for "sit" then "stay" then we leave our dog, return to our dog, reward and release. Then as she got better at the "stay" we varied the time between returning to and rewarding our dog (and sometimes we would leave them again) so that they didn't anticipate the reward and release.
I only reinforce the release. I trained 'release' to mean move (towards me) before I trained sit indeed before I trained anything else (apart from her recall cue). I then ask for a sit and then give a release. Placeboards help hugely. I'll do a quick vid too. The release means she doesn't move out of a crate, a car, across a threshold etc. either - it's worked really well.
She's fine thanks, she was just scared by very strong winds. Back to normal in the light of day, but I'm a little groggy! I started click-to-release before I read about the release cue, so I added that in later. I think either way can work (and, certainly, having a release cue added early helps with the things Julie's mentioned). I think it just confuses me a bit when to introduce the release when you start off with luring (as I did) for the sit, where you're clicking downwards movement of the bum. It somehow seems like a natural progression to me to go onto delaying the click for duration, rather than immediately introducing another behaviour to the chain. I can see the benefit, don't get me wrong, I just haven't thought about how you'd introduce it early. Could you include the progression in your vid, Julie, as if Betsy hadn't learnt anything? I'd find it really useful
We didn't do treat streaming for stay either, in fact in all our classes I've never heard of it. We even had one trainer who does not endorse treats for completion of the stand at all. She says they didn't "do" anything so she only rewards for something that involves an action. I first learned to get duration with a reward at the end and we built in time between treats at the same time we built time into the stay. We do click or use a cue which is FREE and I have a whole body signal which is my jumping up with my hands over my head. I only do this latter at the very end of an exercise as there might be a combination of actions asked for, so essentially time was built into it too.
