Why the Focus on Sit-Stay

Victoria Voith, PhD, DVM, DACVB, is a professor at Western University of Health Sciences and a founding member of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists. And, according to our behaviorist (Jennie), Voith is the one who first developed a baseline SIT-STAY program in 1979. The plan Lilly and I are using is an adaptation of Voith’s original idea.

What is a sit-stay program?
Unlike a traditional obedience SIT-STAY, our written plan explains that the programs used in behavior modification teach dogs to “defer and relax on their way to earning a reward.” Through the various exercises, which challenge dogs with movement, noise, and other stimuli, dogs learn that sitting still is the RIGHT thing to do, that it’s a SAFE thing to do, that it gets rewarded (with food and praise).

It builds a certain mental toughness, where dogs learn to better generalize that sitting still (voluntarily) no matter what changes in the environment is a good decision. Clearly, we’re using it to address Lilly’s profound generalized anxiety and fears, but I’d bet it would work with dogs that get “excited” too, which is really just the other side of the reaction coin. Some dogs behave fearfully or even aggressively. Others get super excited.

Our plan goes on to explain, “The act of being able to hold still voluntarily shows us that the dog is under control and able to face situations we are exposing it to with calmness.”

In simple terms, dogs lose much or all of their voluntary behavioral control when they are afraid or aggressive. By teaching them to have better control in increasingly more difficult challenges, they learn to be calm — and all the food that goes along with it since food “changes how a dog feels about a situation,” a la classical conditioning.

I think of it like this:

Rather than seeing a stimuli and reacting badly, we’re teaching the dog a new mental pathway, a new behavioral option. The old reaction often feels pretty crappy as fear cascades through the body and the brain, so the new option (supported with medication) teaches the dog that the NEW reaction (sitting still) feels better than the old one. Really anxious dogs honestly have to learn that. They simply don’t know how calm feels.

This baseline process can take weeks or even months to put in place. Lilly and I, for example, spent a full month on Part 1a of our behavior modification plan. It’s set up as a 10-day protocol. It took us 30 days before I felt we were OK to begin Part 2, which introduces greater challenges.

Since the SIT-STAY work seems so remedial on the surface, (and trust me it’s T-E-D-I-O-U-S), it takes a bit of faith on my part to slog through it. But, here’s the thing … in order to fix Problem Behavior X, you don’t deal directly with X. You practice with little x’s. You practice with y’s that are kind of like x’s. You throw in a few z’s just as a challenge. You start with a shadow of X. One piece. Then over time, you add the other pieces.

The goal is that eventually the dog can face whatever triggers Problem Behavior X in its full intensity. But, if you start there, all you do is further freak out and traumatize the dog.

So, you work all around the edges, beginning with baseline SIT-STAY work and moving on from there.

While you might say our goal is that Lilly would be able to perform in a real agility setting, the road there requires passing through very strategic, very controlled exposures to EVERYTHING about that setting that scares her separately until she’s OK with it. I need to teach her to feel calm around strange people, in strange places, with strange dogs, with lots of noise, etc. BEFORE I can ever even think about improving her performance of agility tasks.