The benefits of building focus as a specific behavioral skill are enormous.
Have you every tried to get a puppy dog to do something but they're too busy smelling the roses? The sad fact is, they find the roses have more appeal than you.
This may sound obvious but to be able to train your puppy dog, you need to get him to concentrate on you. He is going to learn more and learn it faster if he is giving you his undivided attention.
Building focus is certainly easier if you are dealing with a puppy but if you have acquired an older dog that may not have previously had the opportunity to be taught either because they have been locked in a yard or chained to a kennel or has been given a free rein to do as he pleased, the challenge of developing good, intense attention is a lot greater.
One of the best ways of bonding with your dog is through touching. Take every chance you can to stroke, massage and groom him, even just patting his head as you walk past him or while he is sitting at your side.
Spending time creating a close physical contact is healthy and relaxing for both of you and will create a closer bond and therefore better focus on you.
You always want him to maintain a watch on you whether you are in training or not. An added bonus to touching is that you get to examine every part of his body for any potential health issues.
Ideas on creating focus:
Prepare for the exercise that you will be teaching. If you are giving rewards, they need to be given immediately as the dog responds to your command and that means you need to have the reward readily available.
Don’t make the mistake of having to fumble in your pocket for the reward and cause the dog to wonder what the heck you’re doing. Once he loses focus, you lose the opportunity.
Remain consistent with your rewards, commands and corrections. Learn to make your commands as precise and unambiguous as you can.
Remember that your dog doesn’t speak your language and so he is going to learn by the sound of the command and tone it is given. Remain consistent with both. Remove any unwanted distractions that may affect your dogs learning.
As with all exercises, they need to be started in a quiet area away from any distractions and as the lessons progress, you can begin to introduce distractions. Make your goals achievable. Don’t expect too much too soon or you will both be disappointed.
Create a learning curve that will give your dog opportunities to be successful in his learning and development. Ultimately you want your dog to await your explicit permission before he does anything such as meeting other people or animals. Permission should not be given ad hoc. All this is going to take time so don’t rush him or yourself.
Learn the basics of Operant Conditioning, also known as response-stimulus or RS conditioning.Develop a method of precisely marking the desired behaviors. With his focus on you,
clicker train
and reward appropriately (food, toy, and praise).
Build on the intensity and duration of his obedience by slowly extending the time between marking the correct response to your command, and rewarding it.
Create a release command that will end the obedience lesson. Using this command released him from the physical and psychological stress associated with complete focus. You can give a treat after the release command has been given. I like to give praise or have some tug playing.
Rewarding obedience:
I’m not a great proponent of food rewards because you then have to go through a weaning process but if you do give food as a reward in your puppy dog obedience training, keep the treats small.
They do not need to be large enough where they require chewing and they should not be crumbly because this will cause distraction when the dog is sniffing around for crumbs to vacuum up.
Another problem with giving food rewards is that you student puppy dog is going to be continually looking at your hands for the reward or even worse, sniffing and prodding at your hand which takes his focus away from you.
If you give food rewards, spit them from your mouth and that will keep his attention on your face which is where you want it.
If you decide that you are going to use a ball or toy as your reward, identify one that you know your dog likes and set it aside to be used for training purposes only and don’t allow him to have the toy at any other time.
Whichever reward you use, keep it close at hand but keep it out of sight until you are ready to give it.
When you are training your dog to focus on you, you want to keep him close to you. Allowing him to chase off after a ball puts his focus on the ball. You want the attention kept on you. Keep your training on a short leash.
When he responds as he should, spit a reward to him to catch if you are using food as it will keep him watching your face or use a tug toy if you are using a toy as a reward because he will be facing you to play tug.
Either way, he is looking at you and not distracted by anything going on around him. This is particularly important when you move your training to a public area such as a park.
Make training fun and exciting.
Take every opportunity to train your dog by making your one-on-one training sessions fun and exciting. Make everything he does a response to training and therefore earning a reward (praise).
Teach him to sit for certain occasions such as waiting for his food or waiting at the door to go to the bathroom. Learn to use the different commands throughout the day so that they become a natural part of both you and your dog’s vocabulary.
Learn to crate train your dog. A crate is an ideal place to let your dog rest between training and interactive play sessions.
Make your walks energetic which will cause him to keep alert and maintain attention on you. It’s also physically better for both of you. A slow, lazy amble is going to create a slow lazy dog that is going to have time so smell the neighborhood and have his focus on the ground and not on you.
Keep the training sessions short, maybe 5 minutes or so. Training a dog that remains energetic and enthusiastic will make him more highly focused and will be much more productive than an exhausting hour long session where you are both going to get tired and lose focus which will ultimately end in frustration and failure.
you, you want to keep him close to you. Allowing him to chase off after a ball puts his focus on the ball. You want the attention kept on you. Keep your training on a short leash. 
