I have seen the basic dog obedience vidio which was great ! But I am confused by one thing and that is why is the 'stay' command is used ? Once you tell a dog to 'sit' or 'down' isn't the stay automatically implied? If a dog gets up from a 'down' does this not mean that the 'down' is not good enough? Is it really neccessary to use two commands for the same result. Surely there is no time limit to a 'sit' or 'down' so that you need to tell them to stay. Once you give a dog a command should it not continue this command until further notice? This is DEFINATELY NOT a critisism, I simply don't understand what the phsychology behind this command.

In the progression of teaching a certain position to your dog, or command, you inicially teach the dog to assume that position and reward when he does. It surely is not clear to the dog yet that he must then continue to stay in that position. (also as a general rule, reward ends behavior)

For instance you have trained the dog to put his butt on the ground and look at you when you say the word sit. . .and of course you reward for it. End of deal for the dog. (in the begining)

The next step would be to get the dog to stay in that position once you have given the command.

There are a multitude of ways to do that. Continuous rewarding while the dog is in that position then clearly ending the behavior with a release command, like "OK". Or in the case of "stay" you are adding another command to help bridge the gap between the two behaviors. (assuming a sit, and staying in the sit) The two behaviors are not the same thing to the dog till you train them to be.

So "stay" isn't necessary, but it is usually a very simple way for people to train their dogs in basic obedience.

If you are working to Schutzhund competition obedience then there is no reason to use stay, in fact it isn't allowed.

For AKC obedience or just nice dog obedience stay is fine.


Does that help at all? I'm sure that there are some other people that can explain it more in depth.

There was a previous post which covered off this topic - it maybe worth a look.

FWIT - I don't use the "Stay" command for my dogs. If I tell them to sit, or drop etc, I expect them to stay there until I give the command "free". (My older female is fine with this and we are just starting on my younger male).

However, I believe that formal ob may require the "stay " command

If you mean AKC obedience, nope, you don't have to use the stay command. It's optional. It never made any sense to me either - if I haven't told you to do something different or else released you, my last command is still in effect. Different strokes for different folks.

Release commands are important and I just wanted to make a quick point. I use the word "OK" as VC said, but next dog will be a different command. Case in point: I'm talking to someone across the field and I say "OK" and my dog breaks the long down. Nothing I could do, my fault but made me aware that "OK" probably wasn't the best choice of release words for me.