10 Uses for a Sit Stay
Stay is my favorite command to teach and something I find wonderfully useful. However, I find many people think of stay as a parlor trick—stay while I walk across the room and call you, stay while I put a cookie on the floor or on your nose, stay for your dinner—but don’t make good use of it in daily life.
Here are some situations where I use a sit stay:
1. Putting on shoes. As soon as I go to put on my hiking boots (good likelihood we are going for a W A L K), Ally starts trying to lick my whole face. Putting her on a sit stay a couple feet away solves the problem.
2. Putting on leashes.
3. Retrieving a towel to wipe dirty paws (Yes, I should keep one by the back door, but it’s nice that the dogs will sit and stay on the mat while I go get a towel).
4. Sweeping up broken glass.
5. Taking family photos. Try taking this one without a good sit stay!
6. Picking up poop on a walk. Nice not to get tangled up in two leashes.
7. Playing hide and seek
8. Letting guests into the house.
9. Keeping the dogs out of trouble with non-dog loving guests. Flash and Ally can be on a down stay at my feet and then they aren’t bugging anyone.
10. As a time out. If my dogs don’t stop barking, rough housing, or otherwise being rowdy when I tell them “That’s Enough”, they get put in a down stay time out. Kind of like having a little kid sit in a chair for time out.
One place I don’t use stay is when I’m leaving the house: I don’t expect to come back three hours later and find my dogs sitting right where I left them, so it’s unfair to use a command that means freeze right there until I give you your release command (Free, OK, Break or whatever word you use). Personally, I teach my dogs that they are never allowed out of the house without permission (see Default Behaviors link to article), but if I’m away from home and I don’t want my dogs following me, I use the command Wait, which means don’t go any further forward.