My English Shepherd has to be crated when I leave home or else he will follow my car.
For field work, he will follow my tractor a few rounds in the field, then get sick of it and go back to the house. He follows the pickup to the field for daily work with the cattle, and I want him to do that. It's a 2 mile run for him and I need him out there. But I don't always want to take him to town, he's big and smelly and very "farm doggy".


I'd like him to learn that he can just chill outside--- and watch things for me until I return.

How would you go about teaching this? It's not really " stay" -- it's "stay home". I may have asked this before -- if so, sorry, whatever I tried then, hasn't worked.

He does not have separation anxiety at all, but he likes to chase. I've considered pelting him with small stones while yelling "out" ( a generalized command meaning I don't want you now)
but that method seems -- like something from BEFORE Leerburg.
I used to give him a big bone but lately bones=trouble with Pinker so I've stopped them.

I still can't safely leave Harley uncontained when I leave. He needs his walls, floor and roof or he will follow me. But once he is calm he can go out with the BF and not try to find me. That has taken some time. I don't know if I will ever try to leave whit him not in the house. And if I am teaching in the back and he can hear me, he will come to me come hell or high water. Or dragging the BF on the leash

Dexter just has no will to follow off his land.

I've never done it, I depend on fences, but maybe you could teach him a barrier type behavior, something he's not to cross. Two posts at the sides of the driveway or something.

My dogs have never just hung around outside when I'm not there. Missy was always inside, Kipp and Kenzi are kenneled or baby gated into a room inside. Just too much going on outside

what kind of duration are we talking about ?

i had a command for my previous two dogs : " wait here " .

meant that the dog had to stay in an immediate vicinity , like enough to get up and move to change down position but i never tested it beyond an hour , in a non distractive environment .

but if you have enough time and resources , no reason why you can't marker that . pretty much going to need another person to execute the marks and rewards , while you increase your time away .

Perhaps it is too much to ask of an 18 month old dog.

I'd like to be able to go 1-2 hours. He is fine for hours outside alone if I am inside the house, he doesn't bother the stock.

Would you just have some command like "stay home" or "home" and reward for going near the main house? Like "go to mat"?

Yes, that is how I'd start. And then start using it frequently when you're out and about on the farm before you use it when you go somewhere. When he's solid on that you can try it when you leave to go somewhere. But I'd be leaving him a stuffed kong to work on when you first start actually leaving so he is rewarded for going up by the house and has something to keep him occupied while you're leaving. And I'd probably wait another 6 months before I started expecting him to stay. Both so he matures a bit more and so he is solid on the "go to the house" command

Teach him that "stay home" means to find the stuffed kong or other chewy thing that you hide somewhere.

I don't know if this has already been suggested, with my last male I border trained him for the farm where I kept my horse, he was allowed loose on the property but I didn't want him following me on rides off the property. I used an e-collar and would bring him to the area he was allowed to cross, as we approached it Id say stay, keep walking then add brrrr... keep walking and if he kept continued to follow I would activate the collar, the collar had a vibration setting which I used first, then the low zap. After he understood the border and no crossing as I was riding or walking out all Id say was brrrr, and he would turn around and go wait for me, never followed if I used the brrrr command. I haven't used this with Amber, because she usually doesn't go to the barn with me but I probably will in the future. Jmo.

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Edited by Jodi Moen (09/08/2013 06:03 PM)
Edit reason: duplicate post