Teaching Stay To A Hypo Nutter

[LilBailey]

Ok so as the title says really. I have done a heap of Googleing and thought I would ask for a few DOLer tried and tested methods.

She is very good with the cicker but can't sit still. Like I mean hardly at all. She can sit in her bed inside on the cue "bed" but I have to reinforce a lot still or she gets out then runs back to it again.

I have never had a dog so fidgity, She can't hold a sit even while I don't move let alone atempt to move. Her sits are long enought to click and feed but that is it.

I have a few ideas but looking for DOLer experience.

[bedazzledx2]

Have you tried the steady feet game? Its a stay after all and can be transfered to a sit. Its along the lines of its your choice. I posted an explanation in the stand for examination thread a few days ago.

Ok so as the title says really. I have done a heap of Googleing and thought I would ask for a few DOLer tried and tested methods.

She is very good with the cicker but can't sit still. Like I mean hardly at all. She can sit in her bed inside on the cue "bed" but I have to reinforce a lot still or she gets out then runs back to it again.

I have never had a dog so fidgity, She can't hold a sit even while I don't move let alone atempt to move. Her sits are long enought to click and feed but that is it.

I have a few ideas but looking for DOLer experience.

[Nekhbet]

are you inadvertantly reinforcing the dog to keep hyping up?

When you want a sit or a drop etc you want the dog to be in a calm state. Put new parameters on her, no reward until she stops fidgeting and relaxes. Uf you ae using a reward that makes the dog overexcited swap to something different for a while.

[Zug Zug]

Also think about your own body language and energy levels. If your dog is really 'up', you need to help compensate by being ultra-calm and patient and soothing.

And move forward with your stays only very very gradually - making sure you are rewarding and releasing only when the dog is calm.

To me, a formal sit-stay or drop-stay (where the dog has to wait and not move) is quite different to staying on your bed (where you generally don't mind if the dog moves around, so long as they stay on the bed). So just remember they are completely different exercises and train them separately. I would also suggest you use a different command - 'on your bed' works in our place (well, almost always!) and is quite different to a formal 'stay'.

Set some clear, simple standards and expectations that you will stick with - and most of all try not to show any signs of frustration.

[persephone]

try giving praise sparingly,calmly and quietly.... move slower yourself in your training ....

[fuzzy82]

If you do a lot of shaping, is she simply trying to offer behaviours to see what gets her the click?

Dunno if this will work with your dog, but my dogs tend to get frustrated if I don't click anything they do, and lie down, put their heads down and sigh deeply. You could always reward that. That's not how I taught stay though, I don't use a 'stay' cue, I simply kept rewarding while they were in the sit, until the sit had become so rewarding that they didn't want to get up. At that point, I started leaving a few seconds between rewards, and once you get to that, duration is easily increased.

[J...]

Crate games and Its Yer Choice - crate games for calm behaviour and self control, IYC for more self control.

[corvus]

I found with E that a really high reward rate helped a lot to begin with. I rewarded constantly for a couple of seconds and then released him. I did that until he sat on cue in the dog park off leash without hesitation. Then started slowly increasing the difficulty and duration and reducing the reward rate. Tiny baby steps.

ETA I didn't even mark, actually. Just crammed about 5 treats one after the other into his mouth and release.

Edited June 5, 2011 by corvus

[LilBailey]

Ok so from reading everyones comments I will up the reinforsment rate (am using a clicker) making sure I'm very calm (have been doing that to make sure I'm not cuing other things)and def look into more "its your choice" as I have looked a little. Stay will come when she can hold a sit for more than a micro second, then I can think about cueing it.

"bed" is the cue for going to bed and it is a seerate thing to stay. It is the only time she can be remotely still when not in a crate or out the back (in the laundry) without humans.

Hypo dogs sometimes I wonder while I like em that way. :p