Katie

Ruff is 11 weeks old, and he knows 'sit' 'down' 'stand' 'leave it' (take your teeth off whatever they are touching right now) 'off' (all 4 feet on the ground please) and his name plus 'come' ( but he is not so good at come if he has found something interesting to investigate in the garden!)

I would like to teach 'stay' next, but he is 11 weeks old and seems to be incapable of doing anything for more than a split second. But stay would be useful before we start going our and about, like at a kerb for example.

How does one teach 'stay' to a young pup, or would it be best to wait a bit?

__________________
Katie in Christchurch NZ and Ruff the Phantom Labradoodle. 3/4 standard poodle, 1/4 labrador.

schnauzerpoodle

No, it's not too early. "Staying" for even just 3 seconds is a good start.

You will be amazed by what a 11-wk-old pup can do

jasperspoo

We taught Jasper 'wait' around that age. Just make it fun and he should be fine!

SnorPuddel

It is NEVER too early to start training, especially positive training

ArmyWife

At 11 weeks I could get Bravo to stay - but not for long! He'd get distracted by anything and everything. Ive been working with his boundaries and pushing the time he'll stay seated - but at fifteen weeks he's still flighty.

It can never hurt to begin the base of certain behaviors early; just remember that he is a baby, and does have limits. Don't expect too much too soon. He'll definitely stay - just not for a large amount of time!

JE-UK

It's never too young! Just be aware of his abilities and set your expectations accordingly, rather than letting him fail over and over. A 3 second stay is a big achievement at that age!

Hektor

I like teaching my dogs the stay command when oppening the front door of the house, before they go outside for play and potty at the garden. It's a very good oportunity to teach the puppy to hold himself, to sit and stay (wait) before the door opens wide enough and run outside!
If they don't stay-wait, the door closes and we have another try. I like seeing them waiting until I say them "go!!!"
In that way you have the puppy focused on the door and he waits until the door opens, so there is no other distruction.
My first dog is 3 years old and my spoo is 4 months old and she is doing well.

Marlow's Mum

I'm teaching my 11 week old Spoo a "default" stay. Which basically means that when I say "sit" it means "sit until I tell you otherwise'. and same with "down" kikopup on youtube has a great video of this:

Arcticfox

My puppy class trainer suggested that instead of training a stay right now, just make sure to add a release work to all your positional commands like sit and down. We use "All done" which means they can get up and run around or whatever until the next command. If they get up before you say your release word, you give a verbal correction (AHAH), remove the treat, put them right back into a sit/down/whatever they were in, and repeat, until you are ready to say the release word. Start with releasing right away, and work up to a second or two, etc. I don't remember the exact reasoning behind this, but it made sense at the time :P And this isn't to replace stay or wait.

mom24doggies

I would say yes, just make the stays very short (3-5 seconds) and make it fun!! I started teaching Trev "stay" by telling him to "stay here" whenever I walked out of the door to do something that didn't include him. At that point, I didn't require him to sit still in one position, he just had to stay on his side of the door. Once he understood that, then we moved to staying still. He caught on very quickly, whether that was from our previous work on staying inside when told or because he's very smart I don't know...I'm just relaying what I did, and it seemed to work. Some ppl might say that I would be confusing him by including "stay" in both commands, but I have not had a problem. Then again, I also teach my dogs "down" (lie down) and "get down" (get off the furniture) and they understand both perfectly. Maybe I just have a pack of Einsteins... Actually, it probably has something to do with tone and body language. (But I like to think they're just really smart. )

__________________

"Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man." ~George Jean Nathan