Free Tips to Help a Dog Pay Attention to Humans

In this Omaha dog training session, we shared tips to help Stanley. He is a 3-year-old German Shorthair Pointer mix. His guardians set up this session to learn how to help a dog pay attention. Stanley’s family wants him to stay aware even when he gets distracted.

Tips to Help a Dog Pay Attention

Stanley comes from a hunting breed, which means he’s naturally very alert and focused on his surroundings. Sometimes, people think a dog is being disobedient when they ignore their humans to sniff around or look at what’s going on.

But in reality, Stanley is just following his instincts. To help him follow commands better, we needed to find ways to encourage him to check in with his family. We wanted him to pay more attention to them.

Before sharing tips on how to get a dog to pay attention to people, I spent a good portion of the session explaining how dogs think, how to communicate effectively, how to demonstrate leadership to a dog, how to add structure to petting and giving attention, and the importance of rewarding desired behaviors.

I also went over some creative forms of exercise as Stanley is certainly a higher energy dog. Playing some scent games and adding a dog backpack on walks are all things that will help Stanley.

I’d also recommend they feed Stanley out of a snuffle mat. I also suggested using a toy that dispenses treats. This can help when he needs direction or has too much energy.

How to Get a Dog to Pay Attention to People

Training a dog to pay attention to their humans is super important with herding breeds, like Stanley. Asking the dog to sit, come, or lie down shows that the dog knows the human. It helps the dog practice listening and responding to the guardian.

This also gives the dog a break from what they were focusing on before.

This is an easy way to get a dog to pay attention to you. You can learn how to teach a dog to pay better attention to their owners by watching the free positive dog training video below.

The key with this exercise to get dogs to listen better is to space it out. It’s good to start by asking for a few commands to earn a reward. You can use multiple commands for one treat. However, the real challenge is calling Stanley back when he wanders off to do his own thing.

At first, calling right away is the strategy. But as they continue, they will want him to get more interested / involved in something else before calling him to them. This will help the dog practice listening and disengaging from things to come back to or listen to his owner’s better.

The important thing is to make it a progression; practicing recalls in gradually increasing levels of difficulty. If they get to a point where he stops listening and ignores the handler, they need to go back a step.

The next step is practicing recall or stopping for obedience while Stanley plays with the neighbor’s dogs. This step is important. Once his guardians have trained him to come or listen in different situations, they can return to the dog park.

But exercising him first and ensuring he is calm before entering will be almost as important.

I also walked the guardians through a focus exercise that should help. If they practice every day for a week or two, they should have a focus command word in place.

To help the humans remember everything we went over in this in-home Omaha dog training session, we recorded a roadmap to success video that you can watch below.