Is He Ignoring You On Purpose

I was talking to a friend of mine today and she mentioned how her dog had done a lot of sniffing at the agility trial this weekend while they were running courses.  I see this a lot, not just in agility but also in dogs on leash in class or outdoors.

My first comment to my friend was that she had not built enough value for agility.  She completely agreed that this was the case and then the question becomes how to fix it?

When you give your dog a cue, for example sit, and your dog starts looking around or sniffing that should tell you that you are putting too much pressure on the dog.  This means that you are asking the dog for something he is not capable of doing right now.  Could be he knows how to sit but can't do it with the distractions that are around or your cue was not as salient as you thought it was.  The worse part is if you keep putting your dog in this situation he will eventually find stuff that actually is distracting and know becomes even harder to train.

We are quick to blame the dog; he loves to sniff, he gets very distracted, he never pays attention.  If you have done a good job of building value for the behaviour and building a relationship with your dog you will be utterly amazed at what your dog can ignore.

You need to be regularly testing your dogs understanding of a cue regardless of the distractions going on around him.  Here are some suggestions on what you can work on

• can your dog come to you away from his food bowl when you put it on the floor
• can your dog sit after you throw his toy
• can your dog sit when he sees another dog
• can your dog come if there is a squirrel in the tree

If you are trying these ideas make sure you are not depending on the leash to get the behaviour.  Try if it doesn't work move further away from the distraction.  Keep moving away until it works than have a party and reward your dog.

Have fun with this, let me know what great distractions your dog can preform through.