Field Guide · Glossary
Interrupter
Skills and cuesA cue used in everyday situations to stop a dog in the middle of something and bring their attention back to the handler.
How it works
It belongs to real life rather than to a training repetition: the dog is already doing something, and the cue asks them to leave it and reorient. What makes one work is that it was built in advance and has a history of being worth answering, so the dog turns before working out what is happening. The forms vary. Some interrupters are a cue conditioned with food or play, and some rely on a sudden sound to break attention. Both are in common use and no study compares them against each other directly.
What it looks like
A dog on a walk locks on to a squirrel across the street. The handler says the interrupter, the dog breaks off and looks back, and the walk continues before any pulling or barking starts. The same word had been practiced twenty times that week in an empty hallway, where nothing was happening and nothing needed interrupting.
Commonly confused with
- Anti-marker
- An anti-marker names a response inside a training repetition as the wrong one, and another attempt usually follows. An interrupter is used in everyday life and asks the dog to leave what they are doing.
- Emergency U-turn
- An emergency U-turn moves the dog and handler away from something, so the location changes. An interrupter changes what the dog is attending to, and they may stay exactly where they are.
Related terms
Where this comes up
Gear that helps
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High-value freeze-dried training treats
The paycheck. For reactive work the reward has to beat the trigger, so we keep these tiny, soft, and genuinely exciting, not everyday biscuits.