Distractions are anything that interests your dog enough to compete for their attention. They are a common and important parameter in training plans.

Every dog is different, but the most common distractions include playing with other dogs, chasing toys, prey animals, smells, sounds, or moving objects. Take time to observe your dog and rank their personal distractions from low to high intensity.

You can control the level of distraction by:

• Increasing or decreasing the distance between your dog and the distractions.
• Saturating your dog with the distraction first. For example, practice recall after your dog has already been playing with other dogs for a while and is getting bored of it.

Distraction is one of the three Ds of dog training, alongside Duration and Distance. Together, these are the three main ways to gradually increase the difficulty of any behavior. It is important to only increase one D at a time to set your dog up for success!

In the app, Distraction goals are represented with a squirrel icon.