Listen for Stillness

Tags

agility, competition, Dog Training, Dogs, obedience, progressive training, stays, teaching, training plans

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This is starting to look like the season of stays. With stay instruction and training working its way into many lessons.

Stays are an integral foundation behavior and a part of nearly all performance sports. And the bare bones basics of a stay is stillness until release cue. Defining stillness for a dog consistently though can be a challenge for many people. For many folks, when we start to increase distance and go out of sight, or turn so you can’t see the dog, stay criteria degrades. The dog starts creeping at the start line, or changes positions, or tap dances, the handler none the wiser until they turn to see their dog.

This is where we go low tech. A bell on the collar. And training yourself to hear the silence. Silence means stillness. Stillness means criteria is met. Criteria met means reward or release cue.

Removing the need to rely on vision to validate criteria met for stays means increased reliability, consistency and confidence in your dog and your training.

Listen for stillness.