Treat Yo' Dog!
Training with Food
Why use food as rewards?
- Food strengthens the human-dog bond and teaches your dog to positively associate training time with you.
- You can easily give your dog information about their performance. If your dog does an extra speedy sit, you can communicate to your dog that you’d like to see more of that by giving your dog a jackpot (8-10 small treats, delivered one at a time in quick succession).
- Although rewards can be anything your dog finds desirable (e.g., food, toys, physical touch), food is often the most efficient form of rewards in a training scenario. Small pieces of food can be quickly consumed to allow for many quick reps to be completed in a short amount of time.
What types of treats should I use to train my dog? As a rule of thumb, use the lowest-value food reward that your dog will work for in a given environment. The easiest, lowest-distraction environment is typically inside the home. For training at home, measure out your dog’s daily portion of food and put it in a ziploc bag. Throughout the day, take food from the bag to train your dog in short sessions. If there is leftover food at the end of the day, put it in a food puzzle toy (e.g., Kong, Snoop, Toppl, Kong Wobbler, snuffle mat) for your dog to work to get out. (Learn why your dog should work for his food.) As soon as your dog steps out the front door, the level of distraction in the environment increases. You will need to pay your dog a better wage for a harder job, so use higher-value treats to keep your pup’s interest.
Your dog (not you) decides what’s “high-value.” Don’t worry, high value doesn’t always equal high $$$. Each individual dog has unique preferences, so you’ll need to experiment with many different types/brands of food. I recommend making a list to record what your dog “likes,” “loves,” and “can’t live without.” Additionally, start tracking your dog’s distractions and how hard it is for them to disengage from those distractions. You might want to make a graph — like the one below — to help you select the appropriate reward for each environment.
Exception to the Value-Distraction Rule: Luring
Luring is a useful technique when first teaching your dog a new behavior, especially a behavior that involves being in a certain position (e.g., sit, down, heel, roll over, place). To lure effectively, you’ll need your dog’s nose to stick to your hand like a magnet. Even if you’re training at home, your dog likely won’t be excited enough about kibble for you to use it as an effective lure. Instead, spring for the high-value treats — sticky or crumbly treats that she can lick and nibble at and eat little bits off of, as she follows your lure. The following are some of my favorite high-value treats to use for luring:
- String cheese
- Boiled chicken breast
- Hot dogs
*These are complete dog foods so you can simply replace some of your dog’s daily rations with the equivalent amount of this higher-value food. This is an especially good option for training small dogs, who don’t have as many calories to play with.
Fading Food
Replace food with environmental rewards. As soon as your dog understands a cue, you can begin rewarding your dog with environmental rewards, like tossing a ball, opening the door to the backyard, letting them up on the couch for snuggles, and giving verbal praise and pets.
Be a slot machine, not a coke machine. Consider the analogy: We only visit the coke machine if we’re feeling thirsty. Then, if the machine fails to dispense a soda, we may try at most once more, but we’ll stop using it if it fails to pay out again. In contrast, we’re happy to continue putting quarters in the slot machine despite not receiving a payout each time, because we know it will pay out at some point and we just need to keep trying. To be a slot machine, as soon as your dog understands the cue, increase your cue-to-reward ratio (e.g., sit + down + stand = 1 treat or 3 touches = 1 treat). Be random in selecting which cues to reward — dogs are experts at noticing patterns and may pick up on when you will/won’t reinforce.
Exception: Recall gets an extra-special food reward, forever! Coming when called is a life-saving behavior so you should reward 100% of the time, with special high-value treats the dog can only earn by completing a recall. After your dog understands the cue, practice a formal recall sparingly (there are other ways to get your dog to come to you, like “touch”) and pay very well to keep your dog excited about it.
FAQs
When is food a bribe? Order matters! After your dog understands a cue, the food follows the behavior. If you are presenting the food before asking for the behavior, that’s a bribe. Bribing works only when you have food, so you’ll want to fade the lure from the picture ASAP during the initial training stages. For help with the process of fading food from training, contact Kuma Dog Training today to schedule an initial consultation!
Shouldn’t my dog be eager to please me? Your dog most certainly loves you! But that doesn’t change the fact that they deserve to be paid for a job well done. For those of you whose job is your passion, and you enjoy what you do — would you continue to go to work if you didn’t receive a paycheck? Or would you find another employer who pays you for your hard work? Our dogs are no different 😉