Stay Vs. Wait

Stay and Wait are two very important cues to teach your dog. They are used to teach self restraint/patience as well as for safety. When I am training in a class or privately in a home, I always emphasis how important the Stay cue is. If your dog slips its leash/collar/harness, gets out of the front door, gets out of your hand, gets across the street andcars start coming, the Stay cue if taught properly will help in those situations.

When training the Wait cue, I also emphasis how important it is with teaching self control when feeding, keeping the dog from flying out of the front door when going on a walk, flying down the stairs in your home ect....

I cannot express why it is so important to understand the differences between the two.

To begin, it is important to understand their application. Above I gave you different situations that would work for each cue, that is not an exhaustive list by any means. Along with the application of the cue it is important to understand the differences between them. As I have mentioned above, these two cues are used to teach self restraint and for safety. That is not the only difference though.

Wait

For Wait, you always release the dog forwards. For example, if you put your dog into a Sit Wait and you walk away, you would then call your dog to you. The dog moving forwards is the proper directional release. For the Wait cue, you are walking away from your dog and having them come to you.

Stay

For Stay, you always release your dog backwards. The example I always use for this is, if you leave your front door open while bringing grocerys into the house, you would put your dog into a Sit Stay and release the dog back into the house. With the Stay cue, you are returning to your dog. IF you put your dog into a Sit Wait and released your dog, your dog would fly out the door.

Those are the main differences between Stay and Wait. I hope this helps you with understanding the differences and are able to execute a Stay and Wait better. I will be posting a video as well to demonstrate.