Rock Solid Start Line Stays

I've been thinking abou this question and most problems I have seen either dog breaking the start line stay or not releasing on cue. Breaking stay is far more often seen. If dog breaks their stay it is usually not an isolated problem, usually contacts are broken too and dog generally does not do stay well. When people try competing dog starts anticipating release and triggers early and then handler starts hurry up to prevent it and dog releases even earlier and it creates vicious circle. I wonder how people work on this?
Not releasing on cue is simple. Dog tells you s/he has no interest/ value in doing what you offering so this is matter of arousal.
In general breaking stay is not something I worry about as we have it good in general life so start lines are not something special we need to proof.
I really really want to learn Susan's cue "Go line up." It is most impressive... she puts dog at start line and they do sequence then she tells dog "go line up" and dog goes back to start line and lines up for next round.
 
I was scribing once with a woman who is both an AKC judge and a trainer. We were discussing start line stays because she saw me having issues earlier in the day. She said something that really hit home with me. She told me that many dogs don't just break and go, they break because you gave them a cue. Now, it may not be the cue YOU THINK YOU gave, but it's a cue nonetheless.

As one poster wrote about how if he turned a shoulder or looked back at the dog, the dog released. That's it's cue. How it got there, who knows, but now it's the cue. One woman we saw, she said, "watch her, watch when the dog breaks and tell me what you think was the cue." I was amazed. She lead out, even looked back, even stopped and looked back (dog stayed), but as soon as she lifted her arm, a millisecond before she looked back at the dog, the dog released. It's cue was the arm. Not the look back, not the verbal command.

We discussed many different self-releases (on a cue the dog thinks is right). I went home and wondered what mine was. I never did figure it out. It was so random, but typically, it involved me walking away in a rushed manner. If I was more calm and took my time, he didn't break as much.

So, is it about the dog not valuing what you are offering. In some cases yes, in some cases no...because you are offering the dog exactly what it wants, unfortunately, it's not the cue you were hoping for.

This is one reason I vary what I say, how I say it, when I say it, etc. Proofing with distractions is great. Proofing with a word that sounds similar, is even better. Proofing different words, during different actions, with different distractions probably is the best. Koji has learned to distinguish my different words (it's not fool proof yet), because if I'm leading out, trip, and say, "dangit", I don't want him releasing because he heard me say a word that has two syllables and sounds sorta like "okay".

Just something for everyone to chew on if you do have some start-line stay issues. It may not be true for everyone, but it was an eye opener when I watched handler after handler release their dogs inadvertently.
 
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