How to Teach Your Dog to Stay

Teaching your dog to stay is valuable for real-life scenarios like playing find-it games, preventing your dog from walking through something potentially harmful like broken glass, and waiting for another dog to pass on a walk. It’s a great way to practice stimulus control and expend mental energy.

We don’t expect our dogs to stay for hours at a time. It’s unrealistic and doesn’t provide relevant skills for your dog. But we want our dogs to stay in real-life scenarios reliably, so keep reading to find out how to teach your dog to stay.

And who doesn’t want a solid stay so they can take cute pictures of their dog to show their friends and family?

To Start Teaching Stay, You Need the Following: 

A quiet, low-distraction training space

Lots of training treats. These are some of our favorites! 

Long Line for starting outdoors (this will come later) 

Time, patience, and creativity 

Introduce the Behavior 

When we teach new skills to our dogs, we don’t use cues until we get the exact behavior we want. You can pick a cue like stay, wait, hold, or pause to use later in training. 

Start with your dog in a stationary position, like sitting or lying down. It doesn’t matter which one you pick; we want your dog to be successful, and one position might be more comfortable than the other. 

Remain stationary next to your dog, and mark and feed them after a few seconds. Continue to increase the duration until your dog is staying for 10 seconds without moving from their stationary position. 

Add the Cue

Next, add your cue! Right before you expect them to stay, give your cue and ask for the stay again. Continue the loop: stay verbal cue, your dog stays stationary, mark and feed! 

Add some duration until you’re back up to 10 seconds. 

The Release Cue

Now that your dog understands the stay cue let’s give them a release cue. The release cue provides clarity to your dog. It allows them to know they’re free to move or change positions. 

You can use words like release, okay, go, free, or done. The word itself doesn’t matter as long as it’s easy to say and doesn’t sound like another cue.

After you ask your dog to stay and want to release them, say your release word and scatter a couple of treats or use a hand target to move them out of their position. 

Advance the Sticky Stay

Now that your dog understands to stay while you’re next to them, let’s start moving around. Continue providing lots of food reinforcement throughout these steps.  

Ask your dog to stay and start shifting around a little bit. You can shuffle your feet, lift one of your legs, and move your arms up and down. 

Next, start taking small steps away from your dog while you’re still facing them. Move back, side to side, and around your dog.  Continue progressing until you can take several steps backward, side to side, and in a complete circle around your dog. 

Now, introduce walking away from your dog. This one is tricky because turning away prompts most dogs to start following. Break it down again by shifting your weight, turning your body away, then taking a complete step away from your dog. 

When your dog is reliably staying in their training space, move to other areas in your home, yard, apartment hallway, or lobby. You can move outside and utilize a long line for safety. 

Focus on practicing the 3 D’s of dog training: Distance, Duration, and Distraction. You can learn more about proofing your dog’s stay here. 

Problem-Solving

Your dog keeps moving when you move:

Break your movement down into shifting weight, taking minor steps, and facing your dog until they stay put. 

Your dog isn’t moving when you say your release word:

That’s okay! If you’ve been feeding your dog to stay put, they want to keep doing that! Try tossing a toy or some treats after you say your release word. 

Your dog won’t stay around distractions:

You might be moving through the training too quickly. Go back to the step your dog was successful and keep proofing with the 3 Ds until their reliability stays put. Read more about proofing here

Tips From the Trainer

Teach stay at the end of the session when they’re relaxed and ready to settle down.

This is especially important for puppies that get easily distracted. 

Proof for real life, but stay safe. 

When you’re in open spaces, utilize a long line or tether. Don’t put your dog in unsafe situations by asking for a stay near a road or dogs they don’t know. 

Vary how long you expect your dog to stay

Instead of going 1,2,3,4,5…seconds in your duration, vary the time like 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4,3..

This will keep your dog guessing and prevent them from becoming frustrated for having to stay longer and longer. 

Give Frequent Breaks

Remember to let your dog get their wiggles out and move around between repetitions. This behavior takes a lot of mental energy, so take your time with the training.