Dog training, Attention

 Having your dog pay attention to you is the number one ingredient to dog training and living with your dog as a family member. 

How to capture your dog's attention varies with each dog. To get attention, you have to experiment, vary your approach, and make it rewarding for the dog to interact with you.

Have you ever sat down to have a conversation with someone and what you heard is how much more work needs to be done, how you could have done something better, what is wrong with the world, or other complaints? Did you want to keep listening and focus on that person, or did your attention wander and you started focusing on things in your environment,, what you were going to do next, what you could have for a snack? 

What keeps your attention? A happy friend with exciting ideas for adventurues? Someone telling you how wonderful you are? Someone offering to cook for you? Someone with a quick reprimand and a solution to keep you out of trouble? Someone teaching you something interesting? Someone sharing your interests?

When we work with a dog, we need to find what they are interested in and how they want to interact with people. Sometimes you have to be really goofy to gain attention, reward the attention, and frequently repeat catching the dog's attention until the dog is in the habit of looking to you to see what you will do next. Other times your requests for attention have to be soft and quiet, but you still get to reward the attention and get the dog in the habit of paying attention and not being overwhelmed. Your reward will also vary depending on what the dog finds rewarding. It is hard to believe, but not every dog likes the same thing. My dogs Tippy and Roudy will do anything for any kind of treat and know if there are treats in the area. Peanut just craves words of praise and a gentle rub. Ellie loves her ball being thrown. Jessa likes a smile and a cheerful voice.

Try this: Reward your dog every time he looks at you and see quickly he looks at you more. Your goal is that everyt ime you say his name, he looks at you and focuses on you for an instant. Once he looks at you every time you say his name, you can start delaying the reward seconds at a time until your dog keeps his attention on you for fifteen seconds before you reward him.

Uses: You can catch your dogs attention when he is reacting badly to another dog, encounters a person who is trying to get his attention away from you, wants to chase a squirrel or lunge after speeding golf cart, when he is afraid of something, or when you know something is going to happen that your dog will react to. Catching your dog's attention is the foundation of any other training. No one can learn if they are not paying attention to the teacher.