Advanced Training Games: Building Focus and Attention in Your Dog

Why Focus Is the Foundation of Advanced Training

Any dog can perform a sit or a down in the living room with no distractions. What separates a dog with solid training from one without it is the ability to maintain attention on the handler in the presence of competing stimuli. Focus training — specifically, building the dog's habit of checking in with you, maintaining eye contact, and orienting to you in high-distraction environments — is the prerequisite for reliable performance of any other behavior in the real world.

The Check-In Game

The foundational focus exercise: in a low-distraction environment, simply stand and wait. When the dog, on their own initiative, looks at you — mark (click or "yes") and reward. Repeat. The dog learns that offering attention to you earns reinforcement. Gradually move to more distracting environments. The goal is a dog that automatically and frequently orients to you when not given a specific cue, not just when asked. This is called “affirmative checking in” and is characteristic of highly trained working dogs.

Hand Targeting

Hold your palm flat and present it to the dog's nose. When the dog touches their nose to your palm, mark and reward. Build this to a rapid, confident nose-touch on cue ("touch" or "target"). Hand targeting is versatile: it can be used to guide the dog away from triggers, to move a dog through a crowd, to get the dog to reorient when distracted, and as a foundation for heelwork and rally obedience exercises. It's also a great way to redirect an anxious dog's attention onto something specific and achievable.

The Look-at-That Game

Developed by Leslie McDevitt in the Control Unleashed program: in the presence of a trigger the dog would normally bark at or lunge toward, mark and reward each time the dog looks at the trigger. The dog learns that the trigger predicts treats when paired with looking at you — this changes the emotional association with the trigger from threat to predictor of good things. Particularly effective for reactive dogs who struggle to disengage from environmental triggers.

The 1-2-3 Game

Count aloud (or silently in your head), rewarding only on 3. Over many repetitions, the dog learns that rewards don't come immediately but come after a delay, building impulse control and sustained attention. Vary the count to prevent pattern-matching. This game is particularly useful for building duration behaviors (stay, sustained heelwork) and for teaching dogs to work through arousal without immediately escalating.