Should you use treats to train a dog is a matter of personal preference, but why would you want to miss out on a great opportunity to effectively reinforce desired behaviors? Food is a great incentive for many dogs and it doesn’t require any conditioning. Unless dogs are sick, dogs are naturally drawn to eating food. Actually, dogs are born liking food, and they will always need food to survive, so why not put it to good use? If you are concerned about calories, the good news is that there are several ways to get around this, without having to worry about your dog putting on weight. Following is some information about why you should use treats to train a dog.
Training a Dog Without Treats
Many dog owners are looking for information about how they can train a dog without treats, why is that? If you are looking for ways to train your dog without treats you may be simply wondering whether training with treats is the right way to go or perhaps you may have some issues with training with treats. This is normal. I used to think this way too about a decade ago when I first started training dogs.
It could be you are concerned about calories, or perhaps you don’t feel like walking around with a treat bag. Perhaps you have heard somewhere that using treats to train a dog is bad because the dog grows dependant on them. This is true, but only if you train the wrong way!
You may have heard some people portray the use of treats in training as bad training that may lead to spoiled dogs. Perhaps, you may have heard that dogs should be trained without food because they must learn to work to please their owners rather than expecting a goodie.
Well, there is good news, many of these statements are false or claimed by people who do not know how training with treats really works. So let’s debunk some myths.
“My Dog Should Obey to Please Me”
[adinserter block=”1″]Should you use treats to train a dog? Well, would you spend a whole hour mowing people’s lawn when it’s raining for free? Just like you won’t like working for free, your dog won’t like that either. When it comes to dog training, dogs are thinking “what is in for me?”
After all, if we think about it, dogs in nature have no need whatsoever to walk nicely on leash, sit for petting, run through a tunnel or eliminate in a specific spot. All dog training encompasses teaching dogs things that have no really no main function for their survival. Dog training is for a great part based on our need to turn dogs into well-behaved members of our society. Controlling impulses is not a natural trend in canines and impulsive behavior is simply a dog being a dog.
Dogs are often erroneously believed to “obey commands” just for the purpose of pleasing their owners, but often that’s not the real deal. In reality, these dogs are often “obeying” simply because they have no other choice for getting out of an unpleasant situation.
For instance, a dog who is jerked on the collar repeatedly until he heels nicely and is then praised for doing so, is not heeling so to please the owner, but to simply escape the uncomfortable (and likely painful!) pressure on the neck (and likely the dog owner’s frustration too!). It may feel empowering to think that dogs obey just to please, but in reality, dogs are only complying because they are forced to obey in order to get out of an unpleasant situation.
Given the choice, would you prefer to have a dog who is forced to obey you to get out of an unpleasant situation, or would you prefer to have a dog who is willing to respond to your training cues because it leads to a pleasant situation your dog looks forward to? The good news is that the latter can be obtained with treats, so should you use treats to train a dog, you will be granted an enthusiastic learner.
Treats are a Primary Reinforcer
Should you use treats to train a dog? Consider that dogs need food in order to survive and dogs are therefore naturally drawn to eating, especially if the food comes in tasty flavors and have a strong, enticing smell. Because treats are food, treats are categorized as a primary reinforcer because they are meant to meet a dog’s biological needs.
Primary reinforcers, also known as unconditioned reinforcers, are therefore all those things your dog naturally needs and that don’t require any form of learning for your dog to consider them as reinforcing.
Eating food when hungry, drinking water when thirsty, sleeping when tired, are all things dogs and humans do instinctively and don’t need any form of learning to accomplish. They are linked to survival and therefore are backed by an evolutionary basis.
Secondary reinforcers, also known as conditioned reinforcers, on the other hand, are things that require some learning in order for them to be considered as reinforcing. In order to work, they require a learning process so to be paired with primary reinforcers so that dogs to understand the association.
For example, a dog isn’t born considering the sound of a whistle as reinforcing. Some dogs may even find the noise quite annoying! Yet, pair the sound of the whistle with treats as it happens when whistle training dogs and the whistle will assume a whole new meaning!
[adinserter block=”4″]
Same goes with words of praise such as “good boy. “If you pair “good boy” with treats, your dog will learn to perceive it as reinforcing as well. While pats and praise may seem like things dog instinctively enjoy, you are always better off pairing them with primary reinforcers so to up their value and put them to good use in training.
The main advantage of using treats is therefore that does are naturally drawn to them, no learning is required, so you get to use them to your advantage right away. It’s a clear and effective way to provide feedback to dogs.
“Primary Reinforcers” are things that are inherently reinforcing (that automatically cause an animal to increase the frequency of a behavior). Strictly speaking, they are things that an animal needs to survive: food, water, etc. When you give your dog a treat for sitting on cue, you are using a primary reinforcer.”~Patricia McConnell
You Won’t Have to Always Rely on Treats
Should you use treats to train a dog? “But I don’t want to be stuck with a treat bag always on my side and I don’t want to spoil my dog! ” Well, you don’t have to. A reputable trainer will know how use treats to get behavior by using food lures and will also know how to strategically decrease their use so that the behavior can be maintained without always having to rely on treats.
While treats may need to be given at a high rate to reinforce behaviors during the initial stages of dog training, once the behavior is fluent, the treats may be given intermittently at some point, although, a high rate of reinforcement can be temporarily resumed when the dog is required to perform the trained task in face of new distractions.
After the behavior has attained stimulus control, then treats can be given on a variable schedule (every now and then). When not giving food or treats, dog owners can always use life rewards (going out in the yard, a play session, access to the dog park) to reinforce desired behaviors or they can use secondary reinforcers (formerly neutral stimuli, which were paired with primary reinforcers to build up its potency.)
If you are reluctant to use treats because you are concerned about excess calories, consider that there are many solutions. You can reduce the amount of kibble you feed during the day so to make up for the extra calories the treats provide, or if your dog likes his kibble, you can use it to your advantage and put your dog to work for it.
You can use a portion of your dog’s meal just for training or even the whole amount. Think it this way, a meal composed of kibble can easily provide about 50 to 100 or more opportunities to reinforce desired behaviors if you give one kibble for each behavior! Kibble works great for low distraction areas such as when you are training in the home or yard.
If your dog doesn’t like kibble much (often seen in dogs who are free-fed with 24/7 access to kibble laying out all day) or you are training in areas that are very distracting, you can use high-value treats or you can use this trick of the trade: in a ziplock bag place your dog’s kibble and mix it with some chopped low-sodium organic hot dogs. Store it overnight in the fridge. By the next day, the kibble will have retained all the good aroma of the hot dogs, so you can then put it to good use. You can also use the hot dogs for rewarding those occasional exceptional performances! Win-win!
[adinserter block=”5″]
References:
- Powerful dog training: should you use treats to train a dog?
- Patricia McConnell: Using Secondary Reinforcers – Wisdom from Ken Ramirez