Daft dog training question

[luxaroma]

Are wait and stay the same thing?

No. Wait means to wait til I give you further instruction. Stay means stay where you are until I come back to you and release you.

How do you teach a wait as opposed to a stay?

It depends entirely on what you use the commands for. For us 'wait' is if I put her dinner down and want her to wait to eat it or if I want her to wait to jump out of the car boot. 'Stay' would be if I'd told her to get in her bed while I hoovered I would use stay. Wait tends to be used as a command when she is expected to do something after it (eat her dinner, jump out of the car) whereas stay tends to be when I want her to stay in a certain place for longer. Hope this helps!

For us wait is the behaviour on an agility start line, where the dog will be released from a distance after a very short time, and stay is stay where you are (potentially for a much longer period of time) until the handler returns to the dog and releases.