Help with stay

[Top Barks]

We cracked it tonight with the sit stay command with Frankie, I used his send away mat (car mat) and he sat on that, cos he slides into a down every time!   Then I even left the hall for the first time and he stayed in his down command, god I was so proud of him!!

Well done   

We managed four perfect stays in the park yesterday, two for 30 seconds and two for 1 minute and there was other dogs and everything 
Charlie does have really good food manners and is very greedy so I made sure he could see I had something tasty and kept his attention on it, it worked so well. 

Can you put food in front of him and get him to leave it?
Gradually move the food to be left further and further away having first built up duration with the food in front of Charlie

Now I know I'm being stupid but you do pick the food up and walk back to the dog rather than giving a release command (thats how we've covered food manners at classes),  I really wish I'd asked for advice earlier so we could have been ready for thursday   , you can't use food rewards in the test and I don't want to risk taking too big a step and messing up his training 

I pick up the food and return to the dog and feed in position.
Then I walk away again pretending to put food down and return and feed in the down.
i then release the dog without fuss to ensure the dog learns that the release is not the reward.

[Sarah.H]

Thanks for everyones help, we passed with distinction, getting 98/100  .  Thats it, I think I've caught the bug now so will be working extra hard to go on to the silver (and be panicing all over again  )