Week 8: Walk Away Stays

  This week practice your Walk Away Stays.

You need to be able to leave your dog, at the end of Week 8, and do a Sit/Stay  @ 100 yards. Yes, 100 yards.

Walk Away Stays 

Bring the dog to a place offering some distractions; a high school, or junior college football field/track are good examples of places to work this exercise.

Equipment needed: a choke collar, a fifteen-foot longe line and a helper.  And yes, I mean to suggest that for the purpose of this exercise your helper has been de-humanized to represent no more than a fixture of the routine. 

Some signaling device suitable to allow the helper to communicate with you (with your back turned) would be helpful … perhaps a walkie-talkie?  But a raised tracking flag – with you wearing a pair of the glasses that cyclists wear with a little outboard mirror can work just as well. 

Bring the dog onto the football field and place him into a sit stay about five feet in front of the goal post.  Leave him on a stay, and then back-tie him to the post.  Return back to his side and do an exercise finish.  Keep your movement short, as you only have about 12 feet of slack in the line.

Get yourself and the dog back into the heel position about five feet from the goal post with the two of you looking down field 100 yard at the other goal post.  I will refer to this position as the “Starting Position.”

Your helper shall never be more than thirty feet from the dog and shall always be able to see the dog’s front feet, as well as the dog’s head position.  For starters, let’s have the helper about 20 feet to the left of the dog and standing at about the ten o’clock position.  For simplicity sake, let’s consider that as part of the ‘starting position’ as well.

Okay, so everyone is in the starting position … the helper says: “Sit your dog,” (and pause 2,3,4,5,6,7,8) “Leave your dog.”

You give your dog the ‘stay’ command and/or signal and leave him, right foot first, and march directly toward the other goal post.  STOP THAT! Don’t look back … don’t you dare look back, that defeats the whole purpose of this exercise.   The dog must not become concerned that you and he are separating.  He must become confident in that, lest he become anxious about the potential.

All things good, you are (on day one) going to march out to the ten-yard line, turn and face your dog, give him about a minute or so, and then return back to him.

Upon your successful return around your dog (and pause 2,3,4,5,6,7,8) the helper will say: “Exercise finished.”

All of the rules and strategy for the sit-stay with you out of site (novice week five – Polishing) apply, so make sure to get the lesson taught well in the first three days, while the distances are somewhat manageable.  You don’t want to find yourself working at the proofing distances to find out that you left some goofing-gaps in the training. 

The distances? 

Day one: 10 yards

Day two: 20 yards

Day three: 40 yards

Day four: 80 yards

Day five thru twenty-one: 100 yards.

Notes:

The helper has three jobs.  One is to monitor the dog and to signal you if you need to come back to make a correction (as per ‘Polishing’).  His second job is to ‘run interference’ for you in the event that a loose dog should challenge yours.  His third job is to become a reference ‘fixture’ which will serve a motivational cause and a legal effect.  (Think that over.)