Engagement Comes First: Teaching Your Dog to Choose You

One of the most overlooked parts of dog training is engagement — your dog’s willingness to choose you over distractions in the environment. Without engagement, commands become harder to teach, harder to maintain, and more likely to break down in real-world situations. With engagement, training becomes fluid, purposeful, and rewarding for both dog and handler.

In simple terms:

Engagement is your dog actively offering you attention because they want to work with you. It is not bribery. It is not controlling behavior through force. It is building value in the relationship so the dog sees you as the most meaningful part of their environment.

Why Engagement Must Come Before Obedience

If we attempt to teach commands to a dog who is disengaged, the dog is simply memorizing behaviors under specific conditions. This works only in low-distraction scenarios. The moment something more interesting appears — a dog, a person, a squirrel — the behavior breaks.

Engagement teaches the dog that you are:

• Relevant

• Worth paying attention to

• Worth working with

It creates internal motivation, not external control.

When engagement is present:

• Commands become easier to teach

• Training progresses faster

• Corrections become fewer and lighter

• The dog works with confidence instead of stress

What Creates Engagement?

Dogs value resources, and resources create motivation.The four primary resources in dog training are:

• Food

• Toys / Play

• Affection & Attention

• Opportunities to express drive (chasing, working, solving, exploring)

When these things are given freely without structure, their value decreases. When they are earned through effort and interaction, your value increases.

This is why, in training: We don’t give away what we want the dog to work for.

Engagement at Home (Practical Examples)

1. Mealtime Engagement

Instead of placing down the bowl and walking away:

1. Hold the food.

2. Wait for your dog to look up and make eye contact.

3. Mark: “Good.”

4. Place the bowl down.

5. Release from behavior to eat.

This teaches the dog:

• Calmness earns access.

• Looking to the handler has meaning.

2. Before Going Outside

The door does not open because the dog wants to go out. The door opens because the dog engages with you.

• Ask for eye contact.

• Mark “Good.”

• Open the door calmly.

• Release from behavior to exit.

The environment becomes something the dog receives through you — not instead of you.

3. Greeting People

When guests enter:

• If the dog immediately goes to the door, pause the interaction.

• Reset.

• Wait for focus on you.

• Mark and reward calm attention.

The greeting becomes earned, not reactive.

Engagement in Working / Training Field Contexts

1. Pre-Training Ritual

Before a session begins:

• Stand still.

• Wait for the dog to offer eye contact.

• Mark “Ready?!"

• Begin work.

This teaches the dog:

Training doesn’t start until you choose me.

2. Rewarding with Play — Not Chaos

Play should be:

• Intentional

• Structured

• Purpose-driven

If play becomes frantic and chaotic, the dog enters over-arousal, losing the ability to think or respond. We want the dog in drive — not over-threshold.

Structured play maintains:

• Clear head

• Controlled movement

• Mental engagement

This is how sport and working dogs maintain precision even at high intensity.

The Key Principle

A dog cannot obey if they are not thinking, and a dog cannot think of the things we want if they are not engaged.

Engagement creates the space where learning can occur.

Summary

Without Engagement	With Engagement
Dog works only when environment is easy	Dog works anywhere, even around distractions
Commands feel forced	Commands feel fluent and confident
Handler corrects more often	Handler rewards more often
Relationship becomes transactional	Relationship becomes collaborative

Engagement is the foundation, not the polish.