The Three D’s of Stay:

In puppy training there are three facets in the behavior of stay. I call them the three D’s. Each D will play a role in the success or failure of your puppy’s stay behavior. When training stay, only work on one D at a time.

The Three D's are:

Duration

I start with Duration (the length of time I want my puppy to remain in the stay position). Since I am working on Duration, I will not introduce Distance (moving away from my puppy) or Distraction (noises, food, toys, and animals, anything that may attract my puppy’s attention).

Distance

Whenever you decide to introduce a new D (Distance), reduce your Duration to only 5 to 10 seconds so that your puppy can be successful with this new D.

Distraction

When your puppy has mastered the second D (Distance), introduce the third D (Distractions), reducing the Duration and the Distance you require for the stay.

Continue adding to each D individually as your puppy masters the previous goal you set for him. We will discuss how to train each individual D in the following section on Stay.