How to Teach Your Dog to “Stay” Easily

Teaching your dog to stay stationary and not perform any form of action is a difficult task for an animal to understand. Because you are not asking for your dog to actually ‘do’ something, such as ‘sit’ and ‘lie down’, they have to comprehend how to remain still and hold its current position.

The easy steps to teaching your dog to stay

Using an already known action will make it easier on your dog to learn how to “stay” so ask your dog to sit. Now, instead of going ahead and praising him like you would normally do, this time you will want to add the command “stay” in the same way you asked him to sit. As soon as a few seconds have passed and your dog staying in his position, go ahead and praise him or give a small treat.

Try to encourage your dog to stay in position with your body language. When first starting out with this new command, make sure you stand close to your dog so he wont feel the urge to follow you and make it easy to stay in the same position without distractions.

If your dog should break the stay, then go through the process of sitting and staying again. A few seconds at the start of training will suffice and then gradually build up the amount of time your dog remains in the stay position. Always reward with praise, and eventually your dog will understand exactly what you expect of him.

The next step is to start making it a little more complicated by asking your dog to stay and move away a little bit without him moving.