Hi guys Julie the cat teacher here with my assistant Jones and today I'm going to teach
you a beginner stay.
A follow up video will come where we work more on distractions, but these are just the
foundation behaviours for stay.
So the first thing you need to have is a spot where you can encourage your cat to stay at
so I'm going to use this chair some of you have done my station video so you can use
your mat to encourage your cat to go there or you can just use an object and use your
finger target to get your cat up there.
We're going to work backwards here at teaching your cat to release first.
So if the cat understands that they have to stay at their spot until they see the release
cue, that is a great way for them to understand what stay is all about.
So my release cue is my finger target, so I'm going to use my finger target to draw
him off.
Now let's say he wasn't responding to that I could do a finger target and then drop a
treat and then eventually fade the treat out.
So I have a treat in my hand, finger target, and then drop the treat, click when he follows.
Finger target, click for getting off.
So now that he understands that he has to follow my finger target, I'm going to encourage
him to stay on the mat, or to stay at his spot, until he sees my finger target.
So all I'm doing is clicking for staying.
So what I'm doing is just building value, I'm basically communicating to him that staying
at this spot is what's going to earn him rewards he doesn't need to do anything else but stay
here.
So to make it a little harder I'm going to add a bit of distance so I'm going to take
a step back, return to him, click and treat.
Take a step back, return to him, click and treat.
I like to reward the cat for looking at me too so I might just wait till I see his eye
contact, feed him here.
And now I'm going to release him.
Good.
So now that I've got a bit of distance I'm going to add a bit of duration, so a 5 second
stay.
Good job!
I'm not going to always make it harder so I can do 2 seconds.
And then maybe build up to 10 seconds.
Good!
You might be wondering if you should add a stay cue, well if your cat knows that they
have to wait for this release cue then it's really not necessary.
So when you tell them to go up on their spot and you build the value there, they have to
wait for their release cue, then you don't need to actually say "stay".
Although I don't think it could hurt, it might just be an extra unnecessary step.
The other thing you might be wondering is what should you do if your cat jumps off?
So if they jump off, just don't reward those ones and encourage them to jump back up again.
Alright guys, I hope you enjoyed this beginner stay tutorial, have fun training, please click
like and subscribe to help support cat school.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you later.