When Pigs Fly_ Training Success With Impossible Dogs - Jane Killion [51]
Stay—the indispensable behavior.
Holding still in one place is a very abstract concept for Pigs Fly dogs. Biddable dogs, on the other hand, tend to be hanging on their master’s next command. Remember the Sheltie in Scott and Fuller’s study who “gave the subjective impression of standing around and waiting for someone to tell them what to do”? That dog might settle in just fine with the idea of doing nothing until told otherwise. Your dog, on the other hand, is a Dog Of Action, and the world beckons him. Sniff, dig, chew, hunt, run are all very plausible activities for your dog—stay is not.
Shape
1. Let’s begin with making your dog understand what stay means. Stand in front of your dog. Just wait until your dog is motionless and click/treat that. The position your dog is in is not relevant, but you might find it easier if you ask your dog to sit first because it takes a little more effort to move from a sit than it does from, for instance, a stand.
2. Reward the sit, and then wait a fraction of a second and click/treat again. Whatever position your dog is in, make sure that you deliver the treat in such a way that your dog does not have to move to get it.
3. Continue click/treating almost continuously until your dog breaks position then stop, go about your business for a while, and come back and set up to try again. You want to pause long enough so that your dog understands that his opportunity for reinforcement ended when he broke position. Please do not say anything at all to your dog when he breaks position. We don’t want feedback from you to become a part of this behavior. This is about letting him figure things out for himself. He will see soon enough what gets him an opportunity for treats and what does not.
4. After a few reps of click/treating for remaining motionless, you will see the glimmer of recognition flash in his eyes—he will think about breaking position, and then catch himself and remain seated. Jackpot the heck out of that one. Soon you will see your dog almost squinting with the effort of staying as he sits there—you can just see the bubble over his head that says, “Look, look, I’m st-aaaaying!” Once you get this kind of recognition, you can move on to the next step.
5. Next, build in a little hesitation before you click. You should still be standing right in front of your dog. Hesitate just one second before clicking. Once your dog has that down pat, you can hesitate two seconds sometimes, one second sometimes, and a split second other times. Ping pong your way up until you are doing variations on five seconds.
6. If you can get your dog to stay for five seconds in your living room with you standing right in front of him—congratulations, you have done a great job! Now you can systematically build up the length of your dog’s stays. Still standing right in front of your dog, you will build up to a one minute stay over a few sessions. Once you get to this stage, you should not use the clicker. Just walk back and reward him for staying. Why not use a clicker in this instance? “Click ends the behavior” is a maxim of dog training. What that means is that, once you click a behavior, your dog is free to break position and do whatever he wants. For that reason, use a clicker in the very early stages of teaching a stay to isolate the “holding still” behavior, but move to just reinforcing without clicking the instant you feel the dog understands that not moving earns him a reward. Once you are building up to several second stays, it is counterproductive to click, have your dog get up (which is perfectly correct), and then have to ask him to sit again—that is really teaching a bunch of short stays rather than one long one.
Use the reinforcement schedules in the Resources