Seymour Practices Stay and Come

As I've mentioned several times before, I believe stay and come are two commands that should be learned together.  Your puppy will most likely prefer to come to you, so by teaching him to stay and using come as the release you get to reinforce both commands.

Secondly, it is critical to make sure your puppy is solid with stay indoors before you practice it outdoors, and I always highly recommend using a long (30 feet +) leash when doing stay/come outdoors.  This insures that if your dog breaks stay to chase something, that you still have control.

Seymour is a 7-month-old mini GoldenDoodle who has been practicing stay indoors for the past several months.  Everytime we come back inside he must wait on the doormat until I release him from the other side of the room.  Tonight I decided it was time Seymour got to practice his amazing skills outdoors.

You will notice in the video that I repeat "stay" quite frequently like a broken record, and it even gets to sound very annoying :-)  As Seymour matures and is able to hold focus without being reminded, this frequency will greatly decrease.  There are also a few points in the video where Seymour got distracted and either began to move forward or look off into the distance.  By using either "Seymour" before saying stay or my "ah, ah" noise, I am able to re-focus him to remind him that he's working and must remain focused on the task of stay.

The most fun part for me is getting to see him bound toward me at full speed with such enthusiastic excitement when I release him with "ok, come."  Such a good puppy!