Hello everyone. My 8 month old Sadie has been doing so great. She was super easy to train the basics to compared to my lab. She knows how to sit and lie down, she can shake both paws, walks excellent on leash. We are working on her stay at the moment but she now seems to have lost all focus. The only time i get her attention is if i have treats in my hands. When i have treats she just starts doing all the commands she knows trying to get the treat and wont even look at me. Is this just a phase she is going through? She was doing so welll and then all of a sudden she stopped wanting to listen.
My GSD is younger but she started only doing tricks if I had the treat in my hand so I started hiding them in my pocket and now she never knows if I have a treat or not so she is always listening. I am not sure if you could try that, at first I let her see me put them in my pocket now she just assumes they are always there.
You have to make the dog think that you are the treat, otherwise you will get no focus as dog will be interested in other treats. In other words, make yourself more important and train as part of play, become a treat yourself.
Be less boring (to the dog) and dog will pay attention/focus. You may have to work with someone to teach you how to do this face to face but it is very possible.
Will have to see a video of you and your dog training to comment. In general terms the lack of focus is when the dog finds sources of excitement that do not come from the handler so he/she pay more attn to such sources as they are fun.
So as a trainer the job is to educate the handler on how to become the source of excitement for the subject dog (then you get the focus). The example will depend on what is between you, the dog and your environment so therefore a video is the least bit of information needed to study and provide an opinion.
Teach with food but at some point you need to make it about a game that is an interaction between you and the dog with the object it's based around (if there is one) being incidental.
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