Open by asking them to try it themselves first. Push off from this if it helps: a dog that won't look at you.

What are you actually working with — a dog that flat-out won't look at you, or one that glances and then blows you off? Because those are two different problems and people treat them like the same one constantly.

Before I tell you anything, try this: say her name once, normal voice, no food in your hand, and count how long it takes her to check in with you. Even a flick of the eyes counts. Do that three times today, different rooms, and tell me the numbers.

Kitchen and living room aren't the same test, that's the thing. Floor-staring in the kitchen probably means the kitchen's loaded — food history, maybe she's been yelled at near the counter, who knows — so she's disengaging before you even start. That's not attention work, that's an environment problem, different fix entirely.

Living room's actually the real answer to your question. She looked, then turned away like you were boring — that IS the assessment. She's not confused about who you are, she's decided you're not worth the ongoing investment. Which is honestly the whole ballgame with recall.

"Three or four seconds" isn't a number, it's a mood. Get a phone, film it, count frames if you have to. You're trying to fix something you haven't actually measured yet.

The faucet running is environment, that's exactly my point — you just named the trigger yourself and then told me it's not one. Sound aversion in a specific room isn't "her," it's a conditioned response to a noise. Different fix from attention work. I'm not being difficult about this, the mechanics actually diverge.

Three seconds, fine, I'll take it. That's not nothing but it's not good either — three seconds of eye contact after a full turn-away is her doing you a favor, not orienting to you as a default.

You don't need a camera. Count "one-Mississippi" in your head, out loud even, nobody's grading you. The treat bag and leash are a separate problem — you're trying to reward and hold and observe simultaneously and something's going to lose. Clip the leash to your belt for this part. Free both hands.

Then don't clip the leash, get a pouch. A hip bag that sits on your waist, treats already in it, hands stay empty until you need them. You're not choosing between holding a bag and holding a leash — you're holding a bag in your hand when it should be strapped to you. That's the actual fumble.

If Luna backs up at the belt-clip motion that's worth noting separately, by the way — that's a flinch response to something, and it's not nothing, but it's not today's problem.

The fumbling isn't why she stops looking, incidentally. She stops looking because the reward doesn't land within about a second of the eye contact. Slow hands mean the treat arrives disconnected from the behavior — she's not rewarded for looking, she's rewarded for looking-and-then-waiting-while-you-dig-around. That's a different trained behavior entirely.

Air it out, then. Leave the bag open outside for a day, rub a treat inside it, it's plastic off-gassing not a personality flaw. That's a two-minute fix, not a reason to abandon the whole approach.

One second isn't a talent, it's a habit, you build it separately from her. Stand in the kitchen with the empty bag, practice the motion — reach, deliver to an imaginary spot at her nose height — fifty times without a dog anywhere near you. Boring, yes. That's the point, you're grooving the movement so it's not a decision anymore.

Chicken versus kibble — that's a value question, not a speed question, don't merge them. Plenty of dogs get plenty engaged for dry food if the delivery's clean and the criteria's clear. If she's actually holding out for chicken specifically, that tells you kibble's lost its currency, which is its own conversation. Different day.

Ten reps, then, not fifty. Takes forty seconds, you can find forty seconds before you feed her. I said fifty because reps compound, not because there's a sacred number, don't take the bait on that.

Refusing kibble specifically after you've been gone an hour isn't hunger, though — if she were actually hungry she'd eat the kibble, hunger doesn't discriminate against dry food. What you're describing sounds more like frustration or arousal, she's wound up from missing you and dry food isn't exciting enough to cut through that state. That's not the same animal as "hungry and angry," even though it looks similar from the outside.

Air the bag out for an afternoon, not a day, I overstated it. And leave the chicken thing alone until the mechanics are boring and automatic — right now you're troubleshooting three variables at once and can't tell which one's doing anything.

Take the bag out of the box, obviously — the box was never the plan, the box is why it smells like plastic in the first place. Set the actual bag on a shelf or a windowsill, out of chewing range, box goes in the recycling.

And eating chicken doesn't disprove frustration, it kind of proves it — high-value food cuts through an aroused state, low-value food doesn't. That's the whole mechanism. A picky dog just has preferences at baseline, doesn't specifically lose interest in the exact hour you've been out of the house. The timing detail you gave me is the interesting part and you keep talking past it.

Do the reps while she's crated or in another room if the whining's derailing you. She doesn't need to watch you practice, that's not the phase she's useful for yet.

Every fix I give you, something in the house is against it — no crate, no bag, no other room, no forty seconds. At some point that's not about the dog anymore, that's you telling me why nothing's going to work before you try it.

Plastic smell fades faster in open air than in a closed shelf, that's just chemistry, put it outside on the step for a couple hours if the windowsill bothers you. Costs nothing.

And the reps in another room — you're not training a puppet, you're rehearsing your own hands so that when she's actually there, you're not the bottleneck. Nobody watches themselves practice free throws with an audience first either.

Pick one thing off this list and actually do it before Luna's next meal. Which one.

Fine. Bag on the step, one hour, no rehearsal — you'll just be relying on your hands being faster than they were yesterday, which they won't be, but that's your call to make, not mine to keep arguing.

When you do the actual attention work later, don't grade yourself on the three seconds from before. Start fresh count, same rooms, same no-food-in-hand version first. If the number's better after the bag's aired out, that tells you something about the smell theory. If it's the same, we're back to mechanics whether you like it or not.

Go deal with the step before she notices the box is missing and decides that's the real crime.

Weight it down, don't chase it. Put a rock or a shoe on top of the bag so it stops flapping — you don't need it moving air, sitting still airs it out just fine. Two minutes, done, and then you can ignore it for the hour instead of standing there refereeing a bag.

No attention work today, fine, that's honest at least. Tomorrow, though — same three rooms, no food in hand, count in your head. I'm not letting the bag become the whole week's excuse.

Tape's fine, it'll hold.

And you don't have to count out loud or in your head if it bugs you — watch the second hand on a clock instead, glance at it when you say her name, glance again when she checks in. Same information, no talking to yourself.

If she looks away in the kitchen, that's not a reason to bail back to food-in-hand, that's just your kitchen number — probably low, because of the faucet thing, we already said that room's compromised. Living room's your real data point. Don't average them together and call it a bad day.

Go deal with the tape.

Guessing's fine, honestly — even a bad number beats no number, that's the whole reason I keep pushing it.

And I'm not calling the kitchen a crime scene, I'm saying it's a different test than the living room, so don't stack them together and think you've got one clean picture of her. You've got two rooms with two different problems. That's not an insult to your kitchen.

Go tape the bag. Tomorrow, living room first, before the faucet's even run once, and tell me what you get.