I’m about to start teaching Brito the “stop” portion of the moving stand, and I’d like to make this behavior very strong right from the start. The exam training is completely separate and won’t be discussed here.
In this case, I’m asking myself, “what is more stop than stop?”. The answer is “reverse”
To train your stop from the moving stand in this way, you’ll need some heeling. You’ll need to be able to move both forwards and backwards, ideally with good position. You’ll also need some type of a “stay” cue.
I begin with normal heeling in a forwards direction. Now, in the middle of heeling forwards, I slow down and reverse in a relatively smooth fashion so that we’re now heeling backwards. I go backwards slowly! Then I switch again to forwards heeling. The idea is that Brito can heel forwards and then reverse his body to moving backwards. Since Brito understands a pocket hand, I use it as needed to keep his rear end in while we move backwards. (That is why my left hand drops down. That is a pocket hand and it supports his rear and keeps it in).
So far so good.
Next, I show Brito my “stand” signal immediately before I reverse to backwards heeling. I use my right hand across my body with my palm facing Brito. Soon,that signal begins to mean, “we’re about to heel backwards”.
So the order becomes: 1) heel forwards, 2) offer your stand signal, and 3) go into reverse heeling.
You can see this here – it’s Brito’s first day seeing the stand signal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cstifI_tjsY
Within a session or two, Brito began to anticipate backwards heeling when he sees the stand signal.
Now we’re ready for the next step; adding a “stay” cue with the same hand so that I can move forwards without him.
For Brito, the stand and stay will become a fluid combination – eventually I will give him the hand signal up high and he’ll both stand and stay, but in the following video you’ll see that I drop my hand down to his level to give extra support in these early attempts.
In the next video, I warm up with a few forwards/backwards heeling combinations.
At 17 seconds, I offer a “stay”cue at his height – and I reward that.
At 30 seconds you’ll see I offer my ‘back up” signal and reward that after we reverse together.
At 41 seconds we do our first moving stand. Good boy!
At 51 seconds it is pronounced that he has stopped moving on my “back up”signal Soon that will become his moving stand.
At 1 minute, I offer a moving stand, keep moving, and then back up to him to give him a reward. He understands and holds the stay.
To keep him sharp with stopping, I will frequently combine the heeling backwards with the stand signal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5BA9Kb3y4I
I have much more problem with teaching “heel backwards” than with teaching “stand”