I wanted to do a quick video about the benefits teaching your dog 'loose control' as opposed to what I would call 'tight control'.
You're all familiar with tight control. You see it at Cruft's in the obedience segment, or at any dog obedience trial event. Tight control is where the dog walks to heel as if it was glued to your leg, and often twists its head around so that it can look up into your face while it's walking.
During a tight control 'stay' the dog is put into a specific position and made to hold that exact position until released. All very pretty, but not very practical.
Loose control means that walking to heel gets translated into 'walking reasonably close'. This means that the dog must not stray more than about ten feet away from you but can still have a smell around and enjoy the walk rather than concentrating on your leg. Also, you can only keep one dog in the tight heel position, but you can keep several dogs under loose control at the same time.
The usual rigid 'Stay' becomes 'you have to stay where you are, but you can adopt any position'. Much more comfortable if the dog has to wait for quite a while or the ground is wet.
I was disappointed with the sound on this little video, but it gives you a rough idea.
Ignore the state of the dogs. They've been bog-snorkling for the last half hour.
https://youtu.be/oxg0YBtYjMA