If you’ve ever noticed how your dog moves during training, you may already know you can learn a lot by watching them. Their body language, confidence, and speed all tell a story. Is the dog intentional or chaotic? Motivated or slow? Dogs are beautiful to watch as they move through obedience drills, learn tricks, or clear a search area during scent training. Adding stillness into training is just as important. This week, I’ve been thinking about how stillness can challenge trainers and make training more interesting for dogs. While working on a skill that calls for stillness, I also remembered how useful it is to test and strengthen verbal cues with dogs using this skill.
When Dogs Target with Their Focus
Recently, I’ve been working with a few dogs on what I call a focus target. Unlike a nose or paw target, where the dog touches the target, the focus target requires the dog to stare at a target without touching it. I use this for training some grooming-related behaviors. For example, I might work on having the dog stand while I lift their paws. The cue “face” tells the dog to look at the target.
This skill comes with a few challenges, which is exactly what I like about it. I like when training is interesting. Training for stillness, such as with the “focus target,” might seem simple or even boring, but I don’t see it that way. As an instructor, finding ways to teach this to students is even more challenging than training dogs directly. This skill takes focus and patience from the person teaching their dog, and I need to support my students.
A Different Way to Test Verbal Cues
The focus target gives us a way to teach a dog to wait for their cue and respond with such low latency that I’d call the response instant. I was working with a dog that knows the focus target. As she looked at the target, I gave her the cue to sit, “lift” (stand), and down. Instead of standing in front of her, I watched her movements from the side. The focus target let me do this, and it prevented her from drifting toward me.
I thought it was a great way to get a different perspective on how the dog moves between obedience positions and to prevent those sneaky steps forward. The movement might be slightly different than when the dog is looking at the person giving the cues. Maybe the real value is (occasionally) getting the dog to focus on verbal cues without looking at the handler at all. When they train with their focus on the handler, they also watch their person’s expressions and movements. The game also adds variety to training, which keeps it interesting and challenging. That’s when learning happens. Another thing I do is pause for various durations between the sit, lift, and down. The stillness is worked in easily.
The target also gives the dog a different head position than if they are looking up at the handler. We might want to do this for different reasons, depending on the goals.
Why Stillness Can Be Difficult to Train
The focus target can be challenging to train at first. Instead of rewarding your dog for moving, you reward a lack of movement. You don’t want to accidentally treat a head dip or paw stretch more than once because the dog might think the behavior is about those movements. Another challenge is not wanting the dog to look at you. You have to get comfortable communicating with your dog without the dog looking at you or treats in your hand. A great challenge is to stand behind your dog while your dog looks at the target.
How I Train and Use the Focus Target
I train this a few ways. Sometimes the dog is on a platform, and the target is on the floor with treats on it. I might take one treat off and deliver it to the dog for looking at it. I might begin with the target in my hand, or toss a treat to it on the floor the moment the dog looks at it. I might also start with a toy instead of treats altogether. I sometimes use a toy on a rope, get the dog looking at the toy, and release them to get it when they are still.
While I can’t tell you exactly the best technique for your dog without working with you myself, I hope this post inspires you to think about ways you can train it. If you’re a dog training instructor, I hope you will try it with your students, too. I’ll talk about this skill again, but until then, I suggest writing out the steps you might use to train it before you try it. Planning your training session allows you to work things out before you expect your dog to figure it out. Once your dog can look at the target while you step aside, you can use it to test your dog’s verbal cue responses. Can your dog sit, back, down, or stand without looking at you because they are looking at the target instead?
