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Keeping Your Puppy Focused
from: The Complete DogTeaching your puppy focus is the most important command your puppy will ever learn. When your dog looks away from you, he's listening to whatever it is hes looking at. Distractions are normal, of course, but if he's ever going to pay attention to what you want, you must teach your dog to ignore all the disctractions going on around him.
Achieving focus isn't as simple as using your puppy's name. Everyday you'll use his name for different purposes and worst of all, you'll probably yell his name when he's displaying wrong behavior.
The term you'll use when teaching your dog focus must be a consistently positively, reinforced term. Your dog will first need to learn that he must look at you on command regardless of the distractions gong on around him. He'll next learn to come to you when you call rather than running away.
Here are the beginning steps you'll need to take in order to teach your dog attention.
1. You can start training your dog when he hasn't had personal contact with you for several hours. This makes the morning the perfect time because you probabaly haven't had ontact with him overnight. A dog who's had little contact is likely going to want to give you his attention when the opportunity is available. You should walk your dog first before starting a session. Don't play with him or even talk too much, just put on his lead and take him for a walk him so he can do his business. Once this is accomplished, take him back into the house to start his training, but keep a leash on him in order to retain an element of control.
2. Use food as a reward. It's very important for you to determine know the types of treats that will work on your dog. If you dog is hungry, he'll be motivated by food, but a well-fed dog is likely to show show disinterest, so don't feed your dog before training.
3. You'll be teaching him to look at your face on command and one good reason for him to do so could be the great food falling out of your mouth. Spit out little bits of treats at your dog, whatever food works best. If you have a small-breed or young puppy, you could get down on your knees and show your dog a cracker hanging from your mouth. When he notices the food, let him take a small bit from your mouth.
He must be able to take a small amount of food gently, to avoid accidental bites. If your dog is too rough when getting this treat, you can hold the treat in your hand, close to your mouth, and give him small amounts as he looks at your face while giving the command. The goal is to eventually be standing erect with your dog attentively paying attention to your face.
4. The types of commands you should use are "ready," "look," or "focus", but be sure you're consistent with the terms you do use. Use your dog's name prior to giving the focus command and by making a clicking sound from your mouth after your command helps teach your dog to look at you.
This is what you constantly practice and reward your dog for it. Start to demand longer periods of focus, including focus with distractions all around. Start to increase the distractions while demanding short focus duration. Once you've achieved focus at high levels of distraction, such as someone calling your dog, you can move along increasing focus time. When you command him to look at your face, he must provide continued focus to you until your release or command the next task.
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