Those Damn Stays

I am on several competitive obedience group email lists and facebook groups.  One topic that inevitably rears its head every few months is about the group stays, especially the out of sight stays in open.  And of course the discussion is heated on both sides of the debate with apparently everyone believing either that:
"group stays are massive fights waiting to happen and all small dogs are in jeopardy" or "stays are a training problem and if we only got rid of all those people training with cookies and prayers there would be no issue."

While those aren't direct quotes from people, I believe it pretty much sums up the sides that others will classify you in, regardless of your actual belief and logic used.  Since this is my blog, I want to spell out my thoughts.

First, the AKC has done a pretty thorough study on the number of incidents happening from the group stay exercises.  What they found is that incidents are very, very rare.  We have all heard some pretty horrific stories of dogs being attacked during stays, but the numbers say that there is far more likely to be a fight outside of the ring gates rather than inside.  Whew.

However, judges only report events that deserve a write up.  Actual fights gets reported, what does not get reported are dogs breaking to go visit another dog with friendly intentions or not.  And these are the type of broken stays that I care about.  I am grateful that in this area I have seen very few dogs breaking to go visit other dogs in the B classes.  The A classes (novice and open) are a different story.  In my experience, at least 1/4 of the trials have at least one A dog going to visit another A dog, either while lining up outside the ring or during the actual stays themselves.  Usually the owner in novice quickly goes to gather their dog, but not before a quick sniff or stand over the other dog is done.  And in Open the time taken to gather the dog can be even longer.  Even if the my estimated percentage is off, I'm sure we can all agree that visiting dogs on the stay exercise is not a rare occurrence.

Some may argue that their dog is trained to stay put regardless of whether another dog visits or not.  And I'm willing to bet that my dog's training is that good too.  I may train with cookies, but prayers are only used to keep me from passing out from nervousness!  But the sad thing is that I shouldn't be putting my dog in that position where he has to try so hard to be a "good dog" while being rudely molested.  In training, I make a promise to my dogs that they don't have to worry about other people or dogs.  I have their back and they can trust me.  I actually use my dog's out of sight stays all the time in public as I move their crates and training gear to my car or the other end of the building.  But in those situations I always leave them with someone else watching.  Not so much for watching to see if my dog's move, but to make sure that no one else approaches my dogs.  In a trial, I can't keep that promise I made to keep my dog's safe.  I'm not even in the same room. 

As a quick note to the people who believe positive training equals permissive and is the cause of our stay problems- I note that competitive obedience has very, very few "positive" trainers.  We are a minority group and numbers wise can certainly not make up anywhere near the number of problems that the stay exercises are having all over the country, even if we were all very poor trainers!  Positive is not permissive.

I don't know what the answer is.  The new "pre" classes in AKC where there are no stays are a welcome addition but in my opinion aren't the solution.  I agree with many that getting rid of a stay requirement would be a huge detriment to the sport of obedience.  Even though John Q Public doesn't actually see obedience trials any more, let alone know they exist, stays are the single most impressive thing for the general public and often are the benchmark of a "trained dog."  But changes need to be made.  At minimum, keeping leashes on the dogs is a good start in helping with the "collection" of dog's leaving their place.  UKC has already implemented this change and I applaud them.  Perhaps a second answer would be to have the 3 stewards sitting behind the group of dog's who would be easily able to step on the offending dog's leash within 3 seconds, cutting the time the dog is up at least in half for even the slowest moving steward.  Unfortunately neither suggestion prevents another dog from interfering in the first place.


In UKC obedience there is also an honor stay.  The owner still goes out of sight, but the only other dog in the ring is heeling with its' own owner.  As a working team the owner is there in the ring to protect their dog if needed.  As the honor team, one is still out of sight and out of position to keep their promise, but at least I have never seen a dog try and interfere in the UKC trials I have been to.  I greatly appreciate the human to dog ratio on the honor stay and the fact that the working dog should be focused on his own handler and not even noticing the other dog in the ring.  The downside to the honor exercise is that the judge can not honestly judge 2 dogs at once.  Stewards do not have formal training and may not know whether the foot movement or turning of the body that they see is OK.  Pros and Cons.  From my perspective this seems to be the best option.  Hell, it can even be a stupid sit.