How to focus a very distracted dog?
To get your dog’s focus around distractions, teaching your dog a ‘watch me’ cue, as well as practici Read More
How do you teach a dog to focus command?
Gerhard Auer
2025-07-10 02:47:42
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Start teaching your dog to watch me indoors, away from distractions. It’s a good idea to use small, tasty treats that motivate your dog. Show your dog the treat, then hold it out to the side, at arm’s length. Your dog will naturally look over to the treat. The moment they stop looking at it and make eye contact with you say ‘yes’ and reward them immediately with the treat. Keep practising this movement until your dog is consistently making eye contact with you when you produce the treat. Once your dog is consistently offering you eye contact, you can introduce the verbal command ‘watch me’. This time say ‘watch me’ and then hold the treat out to the side. As soon as your dog makes eye contact with you, reward them with the treat and say ‘yes’. Now, you can slowly begin to increase the amount of time that your dog is holding the eye contact. Start by giving the ‘watch me’ command and counting to one second in your head. If your dog maintains eye contact, quickly reward them. With practice, you should start to find that your dog will look at you as you say, ‘watch me’, and before you hold out your arm. Once they start to do this you can remove the arm signal completely. As with all training, once you’ve mastered it in a calm environment you can move somewhere else and begin to build up the level of distraction.
Macie Jenkins
2025-07-01 13:14:57
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To train your dog successfully, you need them to take notice of you. Getting focus and attention from your dog is the first step to training. Your dog will love being rewarded with tasty treats for focusing on you. Use high value rewards, like boiled chicken, sausage or cheese cut up into tiny pieces. Say their name and reward them with a tasty treat the moment they look at you. Repeat this several times, at least twice a day for about a week until they can reliably look at you when you say their name. Once they are responding well to their name, you can then introduce a marker word, like ‘yes’, ‘good boy’ or ‘good girl’. With enough practice, you should notice that if they do something good and you say their marker word, they should look at you, expecting a treat or other reward. As you continue with training, use your dog’s name followed by your command, and then followed by your marker word and reward.
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Madison Spencer
2025-06-20 08:22:02
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To teach your dog the "watch me" command, you will need some tasty training treats. If you are working on clicker training, you will also need your clicker on hand. It is best to begin training this command in a spot with very little to distract your dog. Choose a room in the house where you will not be disturbed by family members. Once you have your clicker and treats ready, say your dog’s name followed by the command “look" or "watch me.” For many dogs, hearing their name will be enough to get their attention. If your dog looks at your face after you give the command, you can praise it or click, then give it a treat. Move the Treat Some dogs may not respond immediately to hearing their name paired with the “look” or "watch me" command. In this case, after you give the command, wave a treat in front of your dog’s nose, and then pull the treat up to your face. Within a few short training sessions, you should have no problem getting your dog to focus its attention on you. Continue practicing and gradually move up to working in more distracting surroundings to proof the behavior.
Velma Hyatt
2025-06-20 08:15:44
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Teaching your dog to focus on you is the first step to training your dog. When your dog learns to focus on you, then you can begin to introduce dog manners including waiting when you open a door or set down their dog bowl. Before you start training, grab some training treats. The treats should be on the small size—one-bite size.
To teach your dog to focus, hold a small dog-training treat in your right hand and say “FOCUS.” As soon as your dog’s eyes focus on your eyes for a few seconds, then reward your dog by giving him the treat and also give loads of verbal praise. Try repeating this activity 3 or 4 times in one session. Add this exercise to your daily routine. Do it when a commercial comes on TV; try it before you place the dog food bowl on the floor; or use it before you open the door for a walk.
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How do you distract a fixated dog?
Increasing your distance from the distraction is one of the first things to consider. Get success wi Read More