All living beings need to be focused on the thing that they are doing. If our goal is to bring a wardrobe to the third floor, we need to be focused on that. When animals hunt, they are centred and organized – focused, but not fixated. Focusing is a natural state, fixating is not. Fixating is obsessive. Anything done without control or limit is a sign of obsessiveness. It has two causes, which sometimes can be combined.
The first one is if a dog does not spend enough time going for a walk – not just spending time in the park talking to other owners – but serious walk. It is cut off from its natural urge to walk and migrate. In such state it is more prone to finding another source for spending its energy. It can be anything: a tail, a ball, a rock, a shoe, a plant in the yard... In time, it will become obsessed with it. If that object is not available, it will replace it with something else. In time, it will start doing it more and more because it will control it – obsess it. This does not happen to dogs in wilderness.
The other cause, the more serious one, can be a trauma. If a dog gets scared by something and the owner does not react in proper way – as a leader – the situation will make the dog panic and will make it insecure. By not trusting the owner, it will try finding safety by focusing on something that gives a false sense of security, something that becomes its obsession.