Stay

Today's blog post will be focusing on teaching stay. I'll be using a twelve-weeks-old Keeshond puppy as a test subject because little Tallinn will be more fun than theoretical troubleshooting and she's more than a little photogenic.

What to do
First, have the dog sit and tell them firmly (but kindly) to stay. Personally, I like to have dogs on hand signals too so paired with the "stay" position your hand as depicted in the picture below with my dog, Razza.

Granted hand motions do not mean that much to little puppies who are really just starting to learn. With Tallinn, I just said "stay" and took a step (or two) away then went back to reward her with a treat.

Tallinn was actually great at picking up stay given she doesn't really know sit or down yet. I found that rushing away while she was busy chewing her last piece of treat worked wonders because she was too distracted to care.

After the dog starts staying semi-reliably start to add a release word like "okay" to free the dog before rewarding them. For most dogs this is more than a few sessions into learning what "stay" means so feel free to wait to introduce it.




Troubleshooting
In the future, I would consider trying having a second person hold the dog to give a more excitable dog a better chance at staying to be rewarded. Just teaching the concept of staying in one place is difficult in the beginning so it's just not worth it (unless your dog already knows either sit or down) to discriminate as long as they're staying roughly in the same space.

Tallinn's Best Attempt at Stay

Note: Tallinn was already quite tired from an earlier long dog walk.

Destructive Chewing

Given that I've just been back visiting puppies for the weekend I thought it'd be fitting to make this week's post about how to stop, or at least lower the frequency of unwanted chewing behaviors. The general approaches to resolving this unwanted behavior include bitter apple spray (or an equivalent), taking away options and replacing them with toys, and hiding all items that might be chewed. Note that many dogs chew to relieve issues with their situation and environment so it may be worth looking into when and why your dog is chewing.




According to Easy Dog Training the top 3 reasons for chewing are 

1. Natural desire to chew. Dogs naturally explore the world with their mouths; thus, chewing for them is innately fun, stimulating, and self-rewarding (especially if chewing on something tasty).
2. Nervousness, loneliness, or boredom. Dogs use chewing as an emotional outlet. Dog chewing makes up for a good pastime and is also soothing or comforting especially for anxious dogs.
3. Lack of exercise. Under-exercised dogs are more likely to chew as a way of burning up all their pent-up energy.

The bitter apple spray approach occasionally doesn't work because some dogs don't care about the bad taste, but for the rest it's wonderful at providing classical conditioning which pairs chewing with a bad taste. Replacing whatever the dog is chewing with a toy or otherwise interrupting the dog to do something else is great at forcing the dog to think about something else.