Pit Bull Training Tip of the Month:
Do You Really Need to Teach a Stay Command?

A couple of days ago I was working with a client and they asked me when we were joint to teach their dog Samson the "stay" command. My reply is the focus of this article. Do you really need a stay command? My answer is no, you do not need a stay command. As I explained to my client the stay command is a show command, a command you use for formal obedience work and to be honest, I think it's useless as a functional cue.

What exactly is a stay anyway? A stay cue tells your dog to plant their paws on the ground and remain in that exact same spot until you release them or return to them. Read that again. The stay is not a command you put your dog in and then call them. This defeats the very purpose of the stay. After all you are telling your dog stay, in that exact spot, until you release them to move. If you call your dog from the stay odds are you will have a dog that breaks their stay faster than a dog that is taught the correct method.

What is the correct method? You only release the dog after you return to their location and then you can let them up. I'm getting off my point, the fact is, the stay, for the average dog owner, is simply not functional.

My thinking and method is to build an automatic stay into every obedience cue you teach where you can use a stay cue. In other words, you use a release cue instead of a stay cue. Let's look at two dogs, one is learning to stay on cue. The other dog is learning a release command.

The first dogs handler says, "Max, sit. Good boy, staaaay...Good boy!"

The second dogs handler says, "Petey, sit.................Good boy! Okay!" Okay is the release cue. We might be splitting hairs here but you save yourself the effort and the time of having to teach your dog a new cue plus a verbal cue. The second dog can stay just as long as the first dog and in most cases, under experienced training, the dog will hold a stay longer.

Really it depends on the trainer and the dog but the built in command allows you, the dogs handler, to focus on teaching the obedience cue (sit, down, down/sit from a distance) and less time on getting the dog to stay in their place.

Again, I rarely use a stay command in dog training and I say rarely because if I am working on some competition obedience with a dog then I will teach it. However, the meat of my work is done with household pets and dogs that really don't need to stay in place for long periods of time.

So Jason, what do you suggest I teach my dog instead of the stay? Well first, teach a release cue. I use Okay! or Take a break! Or Free! As my cues. Basically your dog is supposed to stay put until they hear that cue. Secondly, I teach the "wait" cue which means, wait for a split second until I make sure the coast is clear, get up the stairs, or clear something out of the way so you can get in the car. It is a short, quick, cue that allows you to control the dogs movement for brief moments in time.

If you want to teach a stay, that's your thing and I have nothing against it. For those of you that want to work the release cue this method is easier, allows for quiet control, and you can give a cue once and then focus on something else that is more important than getting your dog to sit still.

Finally, I am often called in to help hyper dogs adjust or learn patience. The built in stay helps me focus more on the dogs obedience and less on how many hand signals or cues I am working with. Think about it this way, would you rather have to give your dog one command or two to get the same result?

Personally I feel less cues make the training process less confusing. You can focus on training each behavior instead of trying to add more cues to the process.

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