Should You Use Selective Ignorance to Help Train Your Dog?

Those eyes say: Pay attention to me!

One mistake that many people make with dogs is that they let the novelty of a dog's presence take over their better judgment. While it's fine and healthy to treat dogs with affection, this isn't always the greatest way to train them. Instead, you'll want to learn to be selective with your affection, essentially cultivating the skill of "selective ignorance" to help your dog understand its place in your pack.

What does "selective ignorance" mean?

Quite simply, you should sometimes ignore your dog. Dogs intuitively understand that the least-reactive member of the pack tends to be the leader. As Cesar Millan explains it on his show "The Dog Whisperer," if you remember some of the more popular kids in high school, you'll notice they didn't always look around, trying to make friends with everyone. In fact, they often ignored others.

Have you ever asked someone a question only to have them ignore you? How does it make you feel? Many times, we'll want to gain rapport with that person because we feel we haven't earned their respect yet. It works the same way with dogs. If you enter a room and ignore the dog, instead addressing the people, you might find the dog behaving more like, well, a dog.

This selective ignorance can be very powerful. If you ignore a dog until it gives you the right kind of behavior - such as calming down and remaining relaxed - you begin to train that dog into understanding that its role in your pack is to be calm and wait for your leadership.

Remember that it's "selective" ignorance, however. You can't totally ignore a dog and expect them to know what to do. Instead, if a dog produces a behavior that you find desirable, such as jumping up on the couch to relax with you, you can give the dog some affection.

If you remember the film "The Godfather," in an early scene with Marlon Brando, he is petting a cat. Cats are notoriously more picky and less obedient than dogs, but in that scene, Brando hardly pays any attention to the cat, instead simply petting it while carrying on conversations with other characters. You'll notice how quickly the cat responds when Brando moves to put it back on the ground. If selective ignorance works on a cat, imagine how well it will work on your dog.

Just remember that when a dog crosses a line, you can't ignore that. You have to correct line-crossing behavior in a calm way. You don't want to ignore a dog and then let it walk all over you.

Photo Credits: Wyscan

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