FF320: Better Still: Stays Without Frustration

FF320 Better Still: Stays Without Frustration

Combining Stillness and Eye Contact: Stand-By

In previous lectures, you have learned how to capture stillness in the stand and how to teach your dog the value of eye contact. In this lecture, we will combine these skills into stand-by.

Stand by is a term that I first heard from Shade Whitesel, and it’s become my desired default behavior for my dogs.  Stand-by simply refers to the dog standing still and looking at the handler.  The dog should be ready to receive a cue but should not be offering any behaviors.

Here’s my simple warm-up game, where’s your brain.  Notice how Excel defaults to standing still and offering eye contact between each repetition.  This makes cueing the next behavior very simple, and Excel is ready to perform the behavior immediately.  His thoughts are quiet and his body is still, which puts him in the optimal training state.

Putting Stand and Eye Contact Together

Now, it’s time to combine the skills of stand with eye contact. You may notice that your dog defaults to a sit during eye contact. This often happens because dogs are usually heavily reinforced for sitting.

If your dog sits, you’ll want to mark a little earlier. Forget about the eye contact criteria for just a moment and mark the stand just as your dog stops.

This video shows baby Rise’s very first time working on stand-by.  At first, he really wanted to sit.  If he happened to sit after I said yes, I simply fed him further away so he had to stand up to get the treat.  Dogs are smart and they will realize that it’s more work to sit if they just have to stand back up to get the treat, so usually the sitting will go away fairly quickly.  Watch how quickly Rise figures it out!

In the initial training stages, I will keep my rate of reinforcement high, as I do here with Rise.  As the dog gets solid with offering the stand and eye contact, I slowly reduce the reinforcement rate, layering in some duration.  It’s important you raise this criteria very slowly or your dog may go back to offering motion or behaviors.  As you build in duration, your dog will start to understand that staying still is what is earning the reinforcement.    

Homework

It’s your turn to try this!  You can warm up by practicing eye contact.  When the dog is warmed up, toss the treat and as your dog comes back, try to mark the dog as they are stopping.  If the dog sits, feed away from the dog so they have to stand up to get the treat.

Once the dog is standing consistently, try to mark eye contact.  Keep your rate of reinforcement high in the first couple of sessions.  Once your dog is showing that they understand how to stay still, you can start increasing the duration bit by bit.

If at any point your dog goes back to offering behaviors or movement, you can toss a reset treat.  On the next repetition, simply mark and feed sooner.  Be thoughtful about building up duration again so your dog can be successful.