Sandy is practicing her STAY command with her rock star puppy raiser, Colton! 🌟 As you can see, we use a visual hand cue—holding our hand out like a ✋ stop sign—to help reinforce the verbal cue “Stay.” 💡 Training tip: Always return to your dog’s heel position before giving physical praise. This keeps things clear and consistent, so your dog learns that praise happens after you’ve come back to them and they’ve held the position successfully. Sandy nailed it—she stayed three times in a row like a total pro! After that, we released her from working with the cue “Free Dog!” and gave her extra love and playtime. 🥰 Way to go, Sandy and Colton! 💪🐶💛

This is Sandy’s first time working on a SPOT in public, and she is absolutely nailing it! 🙌 Her and her awesome puppy raiser Kyden are doing fantastic with rear-end movement, which means Sandy is learning how to move those back legs left and right — a skill that will eventually lead into a perfect heel position on the left side. This exercise is great for target training, confidence building, and strengthening, and it’s also a very valuable foundational skill for future service dogs in training. 💪🐶❤️