A-Z DOGS & BLOGS

The ADHD Doggo

behavior modification dog nutrition dog parenting Apr 18, 2022

Do you feel your dogs' attention span is worse than yours?

We do too.

While this is common in certain breeds and varies how severe depending on your pup's age. We have learned a few tricks to teach your dog when it is time to play versus when it is time to work.

Please work with the distractions instead of against them. Use the sniffing as a reward after listening, rewarding with throwing treats in the grass. This double reinforcement will teach them that all attention needs to be on you. As they grow older, you gradually take the food away and get them to focus on sniffing. You can get a dog to do just about anything if you authentically get excited about the thing you are doing. Notice the word "authentically" in there because dogs know when to call bullshit.

Another way to help your dog differentiate between play and work mode is an "All Done" command when a game is over and it's time to get back to training or working on a settle cue, which leads us to our next pointer.

Teach a settle cue early on will allow your dog the ability to know when to chill. We want our dogs to be fulfilled mentally and physically, but sometimes we have to do boring stuff as humans. Suppose you want to create a dog that is well behaved in the most chaotic of crowds this means we have to teach when to settle.

Feed clean meals or kibble. The more your dogs' food is similar to a paleo/keto diet, the better. Dogs process carbs into sugar just like humans do, therefore worsening your dogs' attention span or temperament the more carbs in their diet. Feeding clean meats through raw or gently cooked can prevent your pup from being weighed down by a carb-filled diet. Why does it surprise us so much that the less processed and more natural foods, the better our dogs will be?

Work and train in small increments especially if your dog is a puppy. Think 20 Min increments and add time as they get older.

Some breeds can be harder to teach and train using all these techniques above than others. Feel free to reach out for help, and schedule a phone consult with us.

Ruth created to look at the whole dog for a successful and custom training program. Ruth has been in the dog professional career for eight-plus years and has experience with small and large breeds, behavioral, reactivity, and aggression cases. Ruth loves dogs and is a dog mom to three good doggos. Oakley is a 6yr old Akita and Cattle Dog Mix that she adopted. Zena is a Husky/ Pitt mix that Ruth took in as an unruly puppy. Last but not least is Bean, the five-pound chihuahua that they rescued as well. We love empowering owners and their dogs to enjoy a stress-free life together.