Like many of my blog articles, they are inspired by concerns I hear from clients. Today’s concern is “I don’t want my dog to only work for food.” I understand this sentiment, but only to an extent. I understand it from a financial perspective: if your dog doesn’t work for his normal kibble, then treats get expensive. I also understand that it can be a pain in the butt to always have treats and a treat bag on your person.
The converse of that concern is the implied idea that they want their dog to work for them because the dog loves them. Unfortunately, a dog's love for a human is not enough to get them to work for you. That is why we have treats, because food means more to a dog than love (most of the time). Your dog becomes obsessed with treats because it means more than you telling him he’s a good boy.
So once we get a dog working for food, we’ll see that dog only performing for food. Even basic things like sit and down will only be done for food. This frustrates the owner and then they in turn get frustrated with me because this is the exact problem they wanted to avoid.
Here are the mistakes that happen that lead to dogs not performing without food. The first mistake is that dog owners use food for everything. They’ve infact trained their dog to only sit and lay down for food. They’ve trained their dog this way because they’ve given food for every command the dog performs. Their dog has no reason to perform without food.
The next mistake is that they immediately use super high value food. I’m talking about using shredded chicken or super fatty wet dog food. If I was given this stuff and told to sit, I would only sit for the good stuff. This problem also relates to certain dogs not being food motivated at all. They get table scraps, which are very high value. The dog will the hold out until he gets the high value stuff.
Now that we understand a couple problems that people face in treat training, we can begin to change those behaviors. The first thing I would do is put the dog on what the textbooks call a “reward schedule.” What that means is we slowly taper off using food for certain commands. How we taper off food is by changing the criteria we consider worthy of giving a treat.
Let’s consider a basic sit. When my dog is first learning sit, I will treat every time his butt hits the floor. As he gets older, I will wait for his butt to be on the ground for longer periods of time. What I am doing here is expecting more and more from my dog. He doesn’t get to be lazy and only offer me a sit for a treat. He has to work for his food. Whenever my dog offers a better, newer behavior, the old behavior is worth less than it used to be. That means treating less frequently for a 2 second sit and treating more frequently for a five second sit. And once that five second sit is the best behavior, wait for a 10 second sit. Then that becomes the only behavior worth a lot of treats.
I do not believe that a dog owner should ever stop using treat training throughout the dogs life. I think once ideal behaviors become solidified, treats can be scaled back, but should never leave the picture entirely. They are too valuable of a tool to completely forgo. And if used correctly, can really create a positive, familial bond. Even children can use treats. It’s so easy there’s no reason not to.
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