Before You Teach Sit or Stay, Teach This One Essential Skill
MaKayla Smith 
Discover one valuable skill to teach your dog before you try to teach other other skills
The first thing most dog owners teach their dog is "sit" or "stay". But there is one valuable skill that should be taught before these behaviors. This skill is overlooked by dog owners and trainers all the time as a critical foundation in your dog training tools. That one skill can make a huge difference in the success and reliability of all behaviors in dog training and it’s super simple: Focus!
If your dog is constantly getting distracted and not listening to your cues, chances are, you have skipped over teaching them how to focus on you. Or you haven’t built up focus in different environments through consistency. Skipping over this step can cause a lot of frustration for not only you, but your dog as well. In new and exciting environments there are thousands of smells, sights and sounds that can be very distracting, stressful or over stimulating for your dog. This can make it so they are unable to focus. The more you yell and try to get them to listen to commands, the more frustrating you are both going to get and the more your dog will tune you out.
However, if you work on your dog’s focus and show them that focus means fun things, they will be much more likely to listen. But you need to start small and not rush your dog into hard settings or environments until they are ready for them. Start small in your own home or backyard and then work up from there.
The biggest thing about teaching your dog any skill is consistency. Long, sporadic and exhausting sessions will not be nearly as effective as short, consistent and fun sessions. Everyone has 5 minutes a few times a day. A few repetitions before breakfast and dinner will be a huge difference in your dog learning to consistently focus.
Once your dog realizes that focusing on your means games, rewards and fun, that frustration will decrease and your interactions with your dog will become so much more fun!
If you want more information about how to get your dog to focus, check out my affordable mini course Build Focus in 7 Days!