Getting
your dog to pay attention
Candi
Moon
A lot of dog owners are frustrated by a
dog who doesn’t seem to listen. When they try to engage with their
dog its as if the dog tunes them out. For these dogs and owners it’s
simply a matter of teaching the dog how to pay attention, and also
that interacting with their owner is both fun and rewarding.
One way to start getting your dog’s
attention is to do some simple focus exercises with her, that teach
her to make eye contact with you on request.
Start out training this in a quiet
place, with few competing distractions, like your back yard. Have
several small food treats, something your dog really enjoys, to
reward him with. Take the first food treat and put it against your
dog’s nose. Quickly draw the treat up from your dog’s nose to the
outer corner of your eye. As the treat moves your dog should follow
it with his eyes, so that when it gets to be next to your eye, he
should be more or less looking at you. When your dog is looking at
you say ‘good dog’ to let him know he’s done the right thing
and give him the treat. Repeat this several times.
Don’t expect your dog to look at you
for very long at first, your dog is just learning what you are asking
of her. Just a second of eye contact in the beginning is plenty. You
will see when your dog gets the idea as she will start making eye
contact automatically, you can then increase the amount of time that you ask your dog for eye contact.
Again, when asking your dog to look a you for longer, increase the
time by just a few seconds at a time, asking too much too soon will
set your dog up to fail and will make you both frustrated. Breaking
training down into short easy steps makes your dog successful and
helps keep her motivated and interested in the training process.
Once you have repeated the level one
exercise a few times, about 5 to 10 times, your dog should be ready
to move on to the next level. Here we stop luring the dog into the
right position and start asking him to think and figure out what it
is required. Skip the step of putting the treat on your dog’s nose,
instead put the treat in your hand and hold your arm out to the side.
Your dog will probably follow the treat and look at your hand, wait,
after a while your dog will look at you as if to say, ‘Why aren’t
you giving me the treat?’ The moment you get eye contact say ‘good
dog’ and give him the treat. Again he will probably only look at
you for a second or even half a second at first, this is fine, reward
your dog for this and he will learn what you want. Once he has the
idea, you can ask him for more.
After you have practiced this a few
times with your dog and she is looking at you straight away, instead
of looking at the treat, you can start adding in a command word like
‘watch’ or ‘look at me’. Repeat the exercise a few times with
your new command word.
Next, to test if your dog really gets
the idea, try turning away from your dog and saying your command
word. First turn sideways to your dog and if he gets this right then
you can try turning your back on him completely and see if he will
walk around you and ‘find your face’. If your dog can do this
correctly for a few tries in a row you can start making a game of it,
run away from your dog and have him chase you to make eye contact or
spin around in circles and keep him running. Now your dog has added
the ‘watch’ exercise to his list of fun things to do it should be
easy to get him to comply every time you ask. Make sure your keep up
excited praise and food rewards to let your dog know you are pleased
with him.
You are now ready to proof your
training by trying out the new command in situations where there are
more distractions, like when you have visitors around or on a walk.
Why teach your dog to look at you? If
you don’t have your dog’s attention you can do nothing else with
her. Once your dog is looking at you her focus is taken away from
other dogs or people or smells that might distract her and you can
start to work with her on whatever you would like to do next.
This
article may be freely distributed provided it is left intact and the source is credited.
Download the pdf of this article
|
||||||
 |
||||||
