Hi, I know this sounds stupid but I am dead serious! My GSD is very loyal to me. I understand sometimes dogs don’t always know what we are asking of them. Often times she will zone out and it is all I can do to get the focus back. So, I am just wondering and also glad she is extemely food motivated!:yes:
Karen
I think they can. My sister’s collie shepherd mix rescue dog has some form of hyperactivity attention deficit disorder. He is very sweet, but the minute you start to pay attention to him, he loses his mind. He starts wiggling, and trying to jump on you, running into you, spinning in circles,etc.
yes, dogs can be mentally ill, including ADD. Puppies raised on omega-3 deficient diets (any dry kibble diet that is not supplemented) tend to exhibit ADD-like traits due to abnormal brain development. Also some younger dogs kind of act like they have ADD but they grow out of it; we joke they don’t get their brains until sometime after age 3. Also many people never teach their dogs the concept of “self control” and these dogs may act very ADD-like as well.
However, if your dog is just not paying attention to you that can easily just be a lack of training on your part- you have to spend time and effort convincing your dog that you’re worth paying attention to. One common mistake people use with food-motivated dogs is they bribe them- the dog ignores them, so they show the dog some food, and now the dog pays attention to them. However, what they just did was reward the dog for ignoring them, and taught the dog that the way to get food was to ignore them, and also taught the dog that there’s no point in paying attention unless food is highly visible. Food is an excellent tool but it’s easy to mis-use. You don’t show the dog the food until the dog does something worth rewarding. If you want to reward attention, wait for that split-second glance towards you and THEN whip out the food.
I don’t know about ADD, but our adopted Beagle/Australian Heeler/Cattle Dog cross is definitely OCD. With far too many symptoms to mention - some of which: MUST touch (or grab) a cat toy before going downstairs; MUST lick a cat before lying down & going to sleep (any cat will do, although there are favorites); will NOT go to sleep at night unless my husband first “burps” her (MUST be my husband, not me). It goes on & on. Have never ever had a dog like this before.
We had a chocolate lab that was different.
Certainly not much in the way of an attention span and would have a complete meltdown over many things. Generally super high maintenance.
Interesting thing to me was that other dogs would not interact at all with him, they’d either chase him off immediately, or like ours, completely ignore him. I used to joke that it was like having goldfish, for the extent our other dogs would actually interact with him. Since it apparently happened from the time he was a puppy, even with his littermates, I always thought other dogs might just know he was ‘off’.
I always felt a bit sorry for him, until he did the next crazy thing and had to visit the vet. Vet once said he’d never in his career seen a dog with such a big file :no:
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