"Start Line Stay? WHat STart LIne STay? I don't need no stinking start line STAY!"
Over the years, I have heard my agility teacher - Debbie Spence say "Start line stays are all good well, until you put them in a trial!" That also goes for TABLES! I would have to say after many years of training with her I didn't get it until I got a dog with DrIvE!
I worked stays at a young age, even got really good with crate games. To this day, she doesn't break her crate stay... but now she has learned Agility is so much fun! You can just see the excitement bursting out of every fiber of her being... she looks to the left and looks to the right to see what is the closest obstacle she can get to before I even have the leash off her head... Oh boy.
Our start line stays have completely fallen apart. This weekend I had to make the sacrifice to not make her stay at the start so that I could work some of the other things we needed. At the beginning I was trying to make her stay - I could feel the stress rising... and frustration as I see her little no tail butt 20 feet a head of me, leaving me in the dust at the start! So, I quit asking for one. We did some arching, so I could get a little head start, and did some drop the leash and run! It wasn't pretty, but it got the job done. I would have walked off to tell her "fun is over" but I don't believe in my mind she completely understands the criteria. When in my mind, I am confident that I have trained her to understand that she doesn't choose, she must be released - and then I have proofed that with distractions and excitement then and only when I believe she understands that criteria will I walk off when she breaks the stay. My mistake was entering her in a trial, when that criteria was NOT set and firm. At the point I realized that, I couldn't get my money back for this trial, so I decided I would use it for the things I did want to work on.
I have to admit, once I quit asking for the stay and was able to run without the stress at the start line - I really felt calmer and more in control.
So now I have a plan of action (POA) to work Hemi's stays, every day, with different rewards and different distractions.
Stay tuned of some fun videos that I hope to share with you on our road to incredible stays!
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