Let’s chat about chow!
It’s a universal topic. You eat. I eat. Our dogs eat, too. We do so every day. Likely, you’ve carefully chosen a balanced and nutritious diet for your canine companion, but have you given your dog’s feeding plan much thought since then? For example, have you carefully considered how or when you feed your dog?
As a dog trainer I consider dogs’ food intake all of the time. I am always looking to maximize my students’ interactions with their dogs and the feeding routine is a great place to start. So rather than just feeding in a boring bowl, I suggest hand-feeding your dog at least 5 meals per week during the course of training exercises. More if you have a new addition to the family.
Food is a precious resource. Heck it’s our life source, we can’t live without it and neither can our pups. That makes it a fabulous commodity and motivator! This is why I use food in training. Sometimes, for a very short time at the beginning of training I use it as a prompt to elicit a new behavior, other times I use food as a distraction. Very often I use it as a reward.
It seems like an obvious tool to me. You are going to feed your dog anyway, may as well make use of each morsel rather than just toss it in a bowl to have it hoovered up in sixty seconds flat. However, when it comes to dogs, especially dog training, people get funny about food. There is something about breaking from the ritual of the food bowl that brings up all sorts of concerns in folks.
People worry about giving food as a reward for good behavior. They often mention they are worried their dog will only perform when food is present and therefore will not be reliable. Most people think this because they haven’t made the distinction (in their minds nor in practice) between bribing a behavior and reinforcing it. A bribe is presented before the request, with the implication that the bribe will be delivered upon compliance. This does generally work to get the behavior in the moment, however, it also creates the expectation that food will be presented as part of the visual and olfactory package of a training cue. Dogs rely very heavily on context to help them understand our cues and if food upfront is always used in the training game, it will become a part of it, not unlike how children only do what is requested of them in the game when “Simon Says.” So it’s not necessarily willfulness or greed that causes some dogs to perform only when bribed, but rather, poor training and communication coupled with expectations and reinforcement history.
Another common error that occurs when using food in training is that people tend to only give food to the dog as a reward when they are already holding it in their hand! We humans are so lazy! Of course the dog only does it when we have food in our hands if that is the only time we reward her!
Imagine this scenario, you want to give your dog a yummy treat for performing a special trick you are working on, so you go to the fridge and pull out a piece of delectable, stinky cheese in preparation. So now you are holding cheese. Your dog knows it. It’s obvious by the way you hold your hand and because your pup can smell it! After doing the trick it’s time to reward your dog, well, you don’t want the manhandled piece of stinky cheese, so you give it over, right from the hand you prompted the behavior with, as well. The next day you try to perform the same trick for some friends because you are so proud. But now you are simply training in the moment, on the fly.
You did not prep by getting a special reward ready. In fact, you have no reward at all. You ask your pup to do the trick. She does it well even though she doesn’t see or smell the cheese, because wow, that stinky stuff really was delicious and made quite an impression! Surely you’ll pay her handsomely again for a job well done! But alas, you are busy with your friends, you do not have any cheese in hand, so you simply say good dog and go back to chatting. Lesson learned. Your dog just learned that you only pay when she sees the money up front. What you should have done is praised her profusely for her brilliant performance while simultaneously running to the fridge to procure a chuck of the most odorous cheese you could find! Now that would have made an impact.
Additionally, some people use food as a crutch when they do not have faith in the strength of their training and so, end up bribing prematurely rather than wait the dog out to see if the wheels will churn and rouse the correct information to do what you’ve asked. Or you could assume you’ve asked for too much too soon, we humans often do, and rather than break out the food, instead break the exercise down into smaller segments your dog can successfully perform.
To use food properly as a reward, it must be phased out as a prompt after only two or three trials, after which you elicit the desired behavior by using body language and hand signals and then presented as a reward from an unseen source only after the behavior has successfully been performed. (Stash it away in a handy but hidden place in advance.)
So there you have it, how to properly use food in training. It works brilliantly and teaches the dog the relevance of your requests while motivating her as well. After all, everyone deserves to get paid for a job well done, dogs included.
Kelly Gorman Dunbar is Director of the Center for Applied Animal Behavior, where she recruits and trains the instructors for the Dunbar family business, SIRIUS® Puppy & Dog Training. She is the creator of the SIRIUS Sniffers scent-detection program. Kelly is also Founder and President of Open Paw and consults on various matters.
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