Obsessed Attention

When a predator is hunting, the ability to focus on a target and exclude all other distractions determines whether it will eat or not. The same is true when confronting a threat. When a dog focuses on a target, it becomes so obsessed that it will block out sounds, sights or smells that may distract it. When your dog catches sight of the neighbor’s cat, you can stand in front of the dog to try to block its vision and it will simply look around you as if you’re nothing more than a tree or a boulder. You cease to exist as a living entity and become nothing but a distraction to be ignored.

This is the process that occurs when people walk their dogs and their pet focuses on another dog it sees. The dog classifies the other dog as a threat or a challenger (for possession of its pack) and focuses intently on the target. The longer the dog focuses, the more obsessed it becomes. Eventually the dog will become overwhelmed by the need to confront the target and start lunging, barking etc.

This PIB is instinctive, and once again the dog resorts to this behavior due to the lack of other instructions from a dominant pack member. All of you with dogs who exhibit this behavior are saying to yourselves that you take control and it has no effect. In the dog’s mind, hanging on to the leash to prevent the dog’s approach to the target isn’t taking control, but interfering. In order for the dog to see you as being in control, you must control the dog’s MIND, not simply physically interfere with its intent. You must convince the dog to willingly choose a different behavior. It must surrender to your will for you to be in control.

The most effective method for doing this is to do the same thing a dominant dog would do. Bump, block and confront the dog until it’s willing to look at you instead of the target. Interfere with the dog’s FOCUS, not its body. When the dog is willing to focus on you, make it sit or turn its back to the target. This requires the dog to surrender to your will, and in doing so it acknowledges that you are sufficiently dominant to direct its behavior. You’ve taken control of the dog’s mind rather than its body.

The same holds true for dogs that become obsessed about food, prey, etc. If you break the dog’s focus and provide an optional behavior and persist until the dog performs that behavior, you are dominant and in control. Note that the dog must willingly surrender before you are in control. If the dog resists and you give up, you raise the dog’s status in its own eyes and lower your own status. You’ve surrendered to the dog’s will!

Utilizing these techniques to gain control of the dog will be the very behaviors that convince the dog you are a higher status pack member and have the right and the authority to direct the dog’s behavior.