I have worked with dogs for almost ten years now and one if the most common road blocks I run into when training obedience is attention. Have you ever seen an obedience competition? What are the dogs in that ring doing? The really successful ones are staring at their handler as if they are the most valuable thing on the planet. Why? The reason is because those dogs were first taught the value of paying attention.
Hearing Versus Listening
Just like with people, there are a lot of things vying for our dog's attention and focus. This means that at any given moment, our dogs could be paying attention to anything in their environment, even things we have no idea are present. Because of this, there are a lot of dogs who do not respond to cues or their owners voice. I have heard many owners say, "I know he can hear me, he just chooses to ignore me." The first part of that sentence is true. But the thing that many people forget to teach their dog is to listen. Listening and hearing are two different things. Hearing is what our ears and auditory receiving parts of the brain do when sound waves enter the ear canal. Listening is when someone consciously takes the information the ears and brain gather and process it until it can be used and acted on or stored for later use. In other words, hearing is automatic, but listening is an active, conscious process that the hearer must choose to perform.
Obedience Starts with Listening
The first thing that a dog needs to be taught before it can be successful at obedience is not the obedience behaviors, but the skill of listening. Once the dog knows how to listen, that is when teaching obedience behaviors and their cues becomes so much more effective. However, one must understand that listening is not the same as the dog being able to respond to it's name. While name recognition is the behavior that is used to teach a dog to listen, there is a bit more that needs to be done. The dog needs to know that it should be listening for it's name and it's owners voice no matter the circumstances or environment. This takes time and training. If you are hiring a trainer to help train your dog to "come" but it can't focus on anything but the smells in the yard, training will look different. The dog must first learn to listen.
Different But Important Training
Dog trainers who truly love their work will gladly teach dogs to listen. However, it is often hard for the owners to understand what exactly is happening because training a dog to pay attention and listen looks very different than training a dog to simply come when called or lay down on it's mat. In addition to this, some dogs truly have negative associations with certain behaviors and their cues, such as come, and they must be reconditioned to the behavior before the dog can be successful at that behavior. So for anyone who is about to hire a dog trainer, just know that if your dog doesn't know how to pay attention and focus, training might look a little different and might even take longer. It's okay though! Dog trainers can help and the good ones will be happy to do so!
If you are in need of some help with obedience training, please feel free to contact Happy Animalz Training Service at happyats@outlook.com to schedule an in-person or virtual lesson.
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