Quick Lance Update
I decided to enter Lance in another Open A trial to see how he handles the stays again. I've been doing quite a bit of proofing on our stays, having Lance do them in different locations and with different distractions. So far Lance hasn't broke once. Which I suppose is really good news, but I'm also pretty bummed about it. If Lance has managed to hold all of the weird stays while I've been out of sight, it means that I still haven't recreated the trial situation for him. And while when a dog is learning something, you want them to be successful, you also can't teach your dog what he can't do if he never does it. I guess at the very least I'm giving Lance extra good treats for his stays so hopefully he's associating staying with good things and this will make him more confident under the stress of a trial. I entered Lance on Saturday only and it's Thanksgiving weekend so I still have a couple weeks. Unfortunately I just realized that the show location is one that Lance has never done very good at. But that was before all our remedial work we did this past spring and summer so fingers crossed!
I am very excited for this weekend though as Lance has his very first agility trial! It's a CPE show and he' entered on Sunday only doing Snooker and Jumpers. I'm not entirely sure how Snookers works (or really how anything works) so I'm a bit nervous about that, but I suppose we'll find out!
If you don't care about placing in the trial and just want to use it as a training experience maybe you can let the judge know ahead of time what's going on and ask her to call you if he breaks, then correct him, put him back and try again. I know you'll get no score on the stay (will this DQ you?) but it may be your only option if he breaks again at a show. Good luck!!
No I don't care at all about placing and now I don't even care too much if he Q's as long as he holds his stays. Yes, moving on either stay is an automatic NQ.
Unfortunately, what you suggested is completely not allowed. Even during the individual exercises, if you do anything that remotely looks like training your dog in the ring, you will be excused immediately. Which really might be worth it depending on what your issue is, but with the group stays you have no option to do that since you would be distrubing all the other dogs.
You can do that at fun matches though (of which there are maybe 1-2 a yr of around here) which are meant to resemble a trial. And you can do that at run throughs (which most clubs hold weekly but don't give you the same feeling of a trial). I have been going to as many run throughs as possible at different club and am always ready to go back in and correct, and sometimes reward Lance in the middle of it. But Lance hasn't yet broken his stays in any run through.
Thanks for the suggestion though!!! Keep suggesting, even if you're not sure of what I am allowed to do :)