Why Stay? Horses can get stuck wanting to keep their noses with you and with the treat. Stay teaches early on that it’s ok for you to work in different positions.
It’s also a really useful exercise in teaching your horse patience and is the foundation of many of other exercises such as standing tied, being groomed and standing quietly in the horse box or trailer.
I’m looking for my horses to understand Stay, or stand still, while I move around them or walk away.
As always, working with these two horses requires different approaches for each. What is amazing to me is that Shiraz frequently offers to do things that she has observed Jalila doing. For example, I never taught Shiraz about the orange road cone target. I worked with her on a mat. (The double stay was sort of a fluke but I had it on film so I added it in.)