Just think about what would happen if you had to act on every thought that ran through your mind?
You would never be able to focus on a task for a reasonable amount of time because of all the distractions you would find impossible to resist.
Building a huge reward history in your dog’s ability to focus on you and the tasks at hand despite distractions is the goal we’d like to achieve. This will enable your dog to differentiate the importance of the many stimuli happening at any point in time and give him the ability to sort out the important information he needs to pay attention to. For example: Coming to you when called or leaving trash on the sidewalk or not jumping up or trying to lick you when you eat or staying in place even when other dogs or cats or people walk by. Some people call it impulse control but I like to see it as the ability to focus despite distractions.
When we install puppy manners such as teaching your dog to ask politely for attention, food and toys, teaching your dog to leave tempting things and redirect his focus onto you voluntarily and settling or sitting despite distractions are an essential part of allowing your dog to be well mannered. So we teach, practice and reward all of those skills with distractions as well! Your dog will be able to choose those behaviors because they pay off greatly! We will show you how tremendously useful it is to allow your dog the time to think things through without nagging. At DogRelations we show you how to incorporate and elicit manners automatically from your dog so that your “basic obedience skills” actually work to create a deep sense of communication. We do not view basic skills as a “trick” that you have to ask for, but as behaviors your dog knows to display because of the situation they are in. For example: you can teach your dog to sit when you put your hand onto a door handle.
Let us show you how simple this process can be and how satisfying the results are! Contact us today.