Mastering the Sit-Stay Command: Train Your Dog to Stay
Contemplate the reasons why a simple seated exercise can actually assert leadership. Imagine being able to persuade your dog to sit still, regardless of the distractions around it, through nonviolent, painfree means. How would you feel if you could accomplish this?
This "sitstay" practice can be effectively utilized with preestablished verbal cues to communicate and understand your dog. These are language tools that wolves and maternal domestic dogs use, so your dog is already familiar with them. From your dog's perspective, how easy does this seem?
On the other hand, teaching a dog to sit is not as straightforward for humans. We've become accustomed to using nagging and coercive methods to deal with our pets. We endlessly repeat our words, push, poke, pull, pinch, and even hit our dogs in an attempt to extract what we perceive as "obedience" from them.
However, wolves and dogs are not capable of the coercive methods we humans often employ. In other words, pain, fear, and forcebased training strategies are not part of their learning process. Dogs must rely on encouragement, passive restraint, and passive intimidation to educate their puppies. This is the foundation of harness training.
We must learn to recognize the way dogs communicate with us. A dog can easily sit on the ground to receive a treat or lie down on the carpet for a reward. Regardless of your leadership skills, it will do this because its behavior is to obtain one or more primary resources, in this case, food. But for a dog, if it can follow your command without the incentive of a reward, it means it acknowledges you as its leader. In this situation, it might be saying, "I know you are my good teacher and friend, and I am willing to cooperate to prove it," just as it would send a signal to a higherranking dog or wolf. It is astonishing for a new owner to achieve this level of leadership through just one exercise, as it quickly earns the dog's respect. And gaining your dog's respect can lead to the disappearance of most minor behavioral issues.
Remember, staying is an abstract concept that a dog needs to learn and understand. "Sit" means placing the bottom on the ground, "down" means placing the bottom and chest on the ground, and "come" means running to the owner. Strictly speaking, "stay" has no meaning to a dog. It does not respond to your request with action, yet it can take action in response to your request – this is essentially a lack of action response. When your dog finally understands your meaning, it becomes more confident. Remember, building your dog's confidence can resolve numerous behavioral issues.
In the training of staying seated, and in all obedience training, patience is the key to success. Patience is a virtue, and wolves possess endless patience. Observe how well their social systems operate in their world, and it's because they have infinite patience. So, you must learn to be patient.
Notes:
To teach a dog to sit securely using a harness, simply apply an upward pull to the object attached to the harness. The harness will sit like a tent on the dog's shoulders. The dog will be fully aware of the slight tension on its harness, which may cause it to look around uneasily, wondering what will happen next. It might yawn or lick its lips, thinking about submission, or it might act indifferent and try some displacement activities. In this stage, you do nothing but wait. You certainly won't talk to your dog; you just need to look at it or pet it. Essentially, nothing happens. Finally, the dog gets tired of standing still and not being able to move forward, so it will sit or lie down.
Sitting is what you want, so the tension is released, and the dog is praised and petted. Lying down is not what you want, so the tension on the harness remains. When the dog is sitting, make a sweeping motion with your hand to signal "stay." Continue to playfully interact with it or pet it while it remains seated. You can even give it a chest rub. If it stands up again before receiving the release signal, the tension on the harness will be reapplied, and you will once again become silent and indifferent. Repeat this process until the dog understands that you want it to sit and stay.
In this scenario, the dog has no other way to relieve the tension than to comply with your commands. Please note that this method does not involve shouting, hitting, coercion, or bullying – it simply requires your patience – all of which are fundamental elements of scientific, noncoercive training.
