Connected, Driven, Or Detached? How To Recognize And Grow The Right Kind Of Focus In Your Dog

I’m sharing what it really means for a dog to be connected, driven, or detached, and how to recognize and grow the right kind of focus in your dog. Understanding where your dog’s focus truly lies is the first step to building stronger teamwork, better communication, and lasting connection. Transcript: Let's talk about the number one thing we really want from a dog and that is focus. When a dog is focused on you, we would call that a connected dog, right? Now, they don't have to be like riveted, their eye staring that you might be walking down the street, they might be looking about, but if there's a distraction, they look at you. They’re like, they're connected. So, a dog that is looking to their owner, connected dog. Now, the dog that you now say, we're going to do agility, or we're going to do Flyball, we're going to do obedience. And the dog immediately recognizes the antecedents that create their knowledge they're doing something different, the connection now will go to the sport. Will go to what it is you want them to be focused on. It doesn't mean they are 100% disconnected from you because if you just said their name or tap their head or ask for a Hand Target, “Yes, I recognize the sport starts with the connection to you and now we start to work.” So, we've got the dog who's focused for their owner. That's the connected dog. Focus for work. That's the driven dog. What if the dog is now focused for distractions? What do we call that dog? Some people might call them jerks. Some people might call them playing on their own agenda. Some people might call them over the top. What if we called them things like detached? Why is that dog detached? They're detached from their work. They're detached from you. What if we called them environmentally challenged, over aroused, overexcited, overstimulated, overwhelmed by the environment they find themselves in. Remember, our dogs are doing the best they can with the education they've been given in the environment they've been put in. How do we get here? How do we get to a place where I had a connected dog and now, I've gone to that dog has more focus for the distractions than they do for me. They are environmentally overwhelmed. A dog can't be driven for work if they are detached from their owners. I'm going to say that again because some people have agility dogs that they're so excited that they bust out of their collar and they don't even wait at the start line. They're so excited they go, that is not a dog focused for work. That is a dog that is detached from their owners. And let me tell you, how does it happen? It happened because somewhere along the way you were willing to give up part of the 5Cs. You know, there's a fellow that I used to read everything he wrote when I was a young adult, a man by the name of Zig Ziglar, and he had this great quote, and that is ‘The biggest reason for people's lack of success in life is their willingness to give up what they want, most of all for what they want right now.’ So, if your dog has become detached, if you had a connected dog and you maybe had a dog who was driven for work and they've turned into a detached dog, a dog who is, maybe they're doing the work, maybe they're chasing the birds in the field, but they're chasing them on their own. They are no longer checking in. They no longer are following your guidelines. Or maybe you would just have a dog that they go out to do agility and they say, “I see a pond. I'm gone.” Environmentally overwhelmed or detached. You need to think of that dog with adjectives that take away blame or judgment from who that dog is, because who they are is what we created them to be. Our dogs are a reflection of our ability to train.