Hey everybody. Welcome to Shape by Dog. I am Susan Garrett. I am super excited for today's episode.

You know, like the talk shows, like daytime talk shows, they have what's called

sweeps weeks and that's when they do the ratings for the year so they can be like the

top talk show of the year and during sweeps weeks they have like the best guest stars,

ones that they'd never have during the year. Well, if this was Sweepsweaks for

podcasts, if there was such a thing, then this would be the topic I would talk about during

sweet weeks because it is so important to everybody who owns a dog. And that is, holy crap, how do I help my dog when he is distracted?

Like, how do I get my dog's focus when they're around bicycles or chipmunks or somebody eating

a bag of potato chips or a tennis ball? Whatever it is for your dog. And I asked on Facebook just last night what people's biggest distractions were,

everything from lizards to cars.

I mean, things that you'd expect and some things you wouldn't expect.

Whatever it is, you are in luck today because I'm going to share with you a formula

that you can use to strategically work through distractions.

Now, what are distractions, right? Distractions are things that make your dog less responsive to you.

It's like they go deaf whenever this person plays your thing or food, whatever is around.

You may lose their focus. Their focus might zone in only on that distraction. All right. So, that is what today is all about. I'm so excited to

share this formula with you. First, I just want to share something called response costs.

And it will come back later in this episode. So, a response

cost is how much effort it takes the animal to do something and the reward they get for doing

that. For example, let's say you are in bed and you've decided, oh, I'm thirsty.

Now, if your glass of water is on your nightstand, the response cost is super low.

You just reach over, grab your drink of water and get yourself a gulp.

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