How to Train Your Dog to Pay Attention

The ability to ask for, get, and keep your dog's undivided attention is a solid foundation upon which you can easily build just about any skill you want your dog to learn. When you have your dog's attention, you have a partner and a team mate. When you don't, you might as well be talking to yourself! We've all been there so don't worry! I'm going to show you how to teach Focused Attention With Eye Contact.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A hungry, well exercised dog
• Plain collar
• Plain leash
• Pocket or pouch to hold your treats
• Plain string cheese, not the combo twisted variety

1. Review my article on "How To Train Your Dog with Food Rewards". When we teach attention, we use food as one of our main tools.

2. Pay careful attention to preparing your food treats. Cut the string cheese lengthwise into quarters and then into eighths. Cut these thin strips in half. You are going to hold one of these little strips in your hand and break off a piece (about 1/4 inch long) for each reward. Put the rest in a pocket or pouch that clips to your belt.

3. Put a leash on your dog and enclose one cheese strip in your hand. Hold both hands together in front of you, just below your face. We are going to draw the dog's attention upward. You can let your dog briefly sniff the cheese just once if he needs a little extra motivation. Cheese should not be visible to the dog at any time.

4. Say your dog's name in a quiet, friendly voice. Wait for him to look up at you. He'll probably be looking at your hands because you are holding cheese and that's OK for now. The very second your dog looks up at you, smile, praise with enthusiasm and then break off a tiny piece of cheese from the strip you're holding and deliver it directly into his mouth. Sitting is optional.

5. Now take a step away from your dog in any direction and repeat everything in Step 4. Wait for your dog to get into a spot in front of you so he can look at your face. Smile, praise, and reward - always in that order. Give food after praise. After several repetitions, wait for your dog to make eye contact with you before rewarding him.

6. Reward only focused eye contact. Wait for it. When you change position after each repetition, you can increase the level of difficulty by turning your back on your dog before you call his name. Let it become a friendly little game of "find my face".

Tips & Warnings

• It's important to keep your hands together in front of you just below your face so that the dog can easily advance from looking at your hands to looking at your eyes.
• Be extremely generous with enthusiastic praise when your dog "finds your face".
• If you think you're overdoing your praise, then it's probably still not enough!
• If you think you are making a fool of yourself, then it's probably almost enough praise!
• Make sure both you and your dog are having fun with this!

[alltrails]

on 9/2/2009 Really good tips on how to train a dog. 5 stars - thanks!

[bailey4]

on 8/31/2009 Good tips for How to Train Your Dog to Pay Attention. 5*