Hi, I've been working on Harv's stay for a while now: * We've built duration (10 minutes including 5 minutes with me out of sight). * We've worked on distractions - a treat between his paws while I walk around him in circles throwing toys in front of him and dribbling with a tennis ball at my feet. * We're now working on distance. Today we managed a 1 minute Sit stay at 50 paces and a 1 minute Down stay at 60 paces (all on a cricket pitch adjacent to the local gun club with multiple weapons being fired!) This got me wondering ... what sort of distances do you work at with your dogs?
10 minutes is very good! Well done Harv! I don't work at any great distances with Charlie - one reason is that I don't have all that much space where I train. The longest distance that we work at is a rugby pitch length, he'll stay in goal while I walk to the half way mark and back (I''d have to google that to know how far it was though).
That's 70m. And so the distance away that he would travel to a place board is 22m - to the try line. When we get back to training I'll try to work up to half a pitch....
That's impressive stuff. We don't do anywhere near that distance and duration and we probably should!!!
This is something for us to work on. Neither duration nor distance are good at the moment. It's not something I've ever really put any effort into, but now I want to work towards my gundog levels, I need to focus on this. Ten minutes with five minutes out of sight is amazing!
Casper is rock solid in a sit stay, at 70 - 100 m. I slowly increased the distance,always coming back, treating him giving a release cue. He is good with distractions when in "training mode" as long as his excitement threshold is low. He seems a natural with this exercise, eyes on me the whole time. Benson, is different. I also think I have messed up his sit stay, by confusing him, he became unsure about what was the behaviour I wanted from him, and so the dreaded "creep" developed . We are back to basics on the sit stay.. Shorter distance, about 5-10 metres.No distractions. I don't turn away but walk backwards. No talking, come back, C&T in position, but I slow down here, no hand in treat bag. My mistake was to rush things at this point, walking towards him, talking a bit...C&T with hand already in treat bag. When he failed I also made the mistake of putting him straight back in a sit...yup...C&T. What I should have done when he failed, is to switch to a completely different exercise that he loves, or game... then back to a really easy sit stay.
A quick question I've been wondering about. When you start with this and you're still at short distances, facing the dog, do you keep eye contact with him? I worry about it seeming like I'm staring him/her down, so I tend to look away, but I wonder whether this is recommended?
Personally I don't maintain eye contact with Juno but then I've always turned and walked away from her, apart from the initial few steps away in training the stay. I work upon the basis that I've asked for the stay, whether in sit or down, so where I'm looking is not so important although I usually look in Juno's general direction - what I have to be careful of is not raising my hand to scratch my face as that can trigger Juno's recall to me from a distance
No, I don't maintain eye contact with Charlie. I started off walking a very small circle around him and always turned to walk away. Maintaining eye contact just didn't occur to me as a thing to do.
Yes, I turn and walk away in general (unless we're in a high-excitement environment when backing away at first helps keep them steady), but I then always turn to face them for the rest of the duration. Since they're staring at me when I do this, it seems natural to look at them, but I don't want to end up in a staring match, making them feel uncomfortable.
With Casper I turn and walk away. I don't maintain eye contact, actually deliberately look at "triggers" so he will hopefully follow my eye line, and this helps him process the trigger, and choose to stay in a sit. But that is because I am using his good focus on me in a sit stay to help with something else we are working on. With Benson we are back to basics. He is fine if I walk around in a circle, but will creep if I turn my back and start walking more that a few metres away. Sigh...
I have two variations....I too use the walk round the dog and I also do this on quite rough ground so I dont/can't look at the dog the whole time. Both of mine rotate to watch me but that's fine. With a stop, which is just a sit at distance, I'm watching my dogs and they look at me for instruction. I know the stop whistle is really sinking in though when they will stop when they can't see me. It can make giving direction tricky though
Oh goodness, I must get back with 'down and stay' training - they have to do a 10 minute out of sight stay at the exam we are doing in September... I hate training stay, it's so boring!
Very impressive Harvey . Harley will sit/stay for about 2 minutes out in a park/field/woods with me at about 30 foot.
Kate and Julie, 70+ metres sounds very impressive. It'll give us incentive to keep working. (although I'm a little disappointed that Julie puts Charlie in goal and then doesn't try to score!) Fiona, I tend to look in Harv's general direction rather than staring at him as if I'm trying to hypnotise him. You have to be careful that you don't inadvertently give some sort of signal with your eyes that it is OK to move (one of our trainers is convinced that you should avoid eye contact completely during a stay - I'm not convinced by this but I can see the rationale). My biggest problem is, like Rosemary, the accidental hand signal - at 50 seconds in to a 1 minute stay this evening a fly landed on my face! It took huge willpower on my part not to move my hand but I knew if I did that might, at a distance, look like a recall signal (it wouldn't really but I suspect Harv might see it as such!).
Yesterday Juno ignored me scratching my face while in a stay at distance - needed 2 calls though for her to react to her recall. Think she wanted to make sure she had it right
I do distance sit/stay with Bob quite a bit when we are out on our walks. I would say I've got about 50 paces away from him, it's hard to tell exactly. I usually command him to do the action from a distance when he's ahead of me and will then slowly walk up to and then past him for quite a distance before giving the release. He's quite good at it, dunno how it happened really! I guess he's in position for about 2 minutes by the time I've walked past him and released him.
