Let's talk about the number one thing we really want from a dog and that is focus.

When a dog is focused on you, we would call that a connected dog, right? Now, they don't

have to be like riveted, their eyes staring that you might

be walking down the street, they might be looking about, but if there's a distraction, they look at you.

They're like, they're connected. So, a dog that is looking to their owner, connected dog.

Now, the dog that you now say, we're going to do agility or we're going to do flyball, we're going

to do obedience. And the dog immediately recognizes the antecedents that create their knowledge,

they're doing something different. The connection now will go to the sport, we'll go to what it

is you want them to be focused on. It doesn't

mean they are 100% disconnected from you because if you just said their name or tap their head

or asked for a hand target, yes, I recognize the sport starts with the connection to you.

And now we start to work.

So, we've got the dog who's focused for their owner, that's the connected dog.

Focus for work, that's the driven dog. What if the dog is now focused for distractions?

What do we call that dog? Some people might call them jerks, some people might call them playing on their own agenda.

Some people might call them over the top. What if we called them things like detached?

Why is that dog detached? They're detached from the work. They're detached from you.

What if we called them environmentally challenged, over aroused,

over excited, overstimulated, overwhelmed by the environment they find themselves in?

Remember, our dogs are doing the best they can with the education they've been given

in the environment they've been put in. How do we get here? How do we get to a place where I had

a connected dog? And now I've gone to, that dog has more focus for the distractions than they do

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