All dogs are motivated by food but some more than others. Sometimes the fear of a situation or an intensive distraction can override the effectiveness of foods you might be using for treats. Just as you might go off your food when you are feeling tense or stressful, so too will your dog.
I work with refuge and rescued dogs that have often been exposed to abusive or stressful situations. Many of these dogs are keen to please and will do anything for a little attention and a special treat in the early stages of working with them. But as work continues with the dog or if they have learned some bad habits in the past, they may become interested in other things that capture their attention and fail to respond favorably to the treats that once worked for them. It is at this point that the quality of your reward really needs to match or surpass what it is you are asking of your dog.
I work with refuge and rescued dogs that have often been exposed to abusive or stressful situations. Many of these dogs are keen to please and will do anything for a little attention and a special treat in the early stages of working with them. But as work continues with the dog or if they have learned some bad habits in the past, they may become interested in other things that capture their attention and fail to respond favorably to the treats that once worked for them. It is at this point that the quality of your reward really needs to match or surpass what it is you are asking of your dog.
Unfortunately animal products are not as
well labeled as human ones and I found it hard to identify exactly what went into many of the commercial brands. Unless you are willing to give your treats the taste test, you have to rely on your dog's response to the treat in a variety of situations. In the early days of my clicker training I would try any product on the market that was labeled as tasty and nutritious - my miniature poodle always performed the taste test and spat out more treats than he swallowed. Some would work in safe situations but the majority I couldn't take on the road with him - he just wasn't interested. This caused me all sorts of problems when it
came to identifying quality treats for which my dogs would work. In the end I was buying commercially prepared pure meat treats but to get 100% quality meat products
is expensive.. During a single clicker training session, our Beauceron pup would
gobble up 50 grams of treats. As he has five or six 15-20 minute daily
training sessions – that equated to nearly three packs of commercial food a day.
I needed a more economical solution.
A brain wave, and a particularly long hot summer, resulted
in my harnessing the power of the sun to dry a Meaty Treats mix (see my Recipes blog for details) that I’d had
quite a lot of success with in a paste form with both my dogs. Not a problem if
you live in a tropical climate, but I live in Switzerland, how was I going to
maintain this through the winter? I tried a couple of times drying it in the
oven, but even the coolest temperature of my oven was too hot and the meat
started cooking, making my apartment smell like an abattoir. The dogs loved it,
but they were the only ones!
During my KPA residential at the Legacy Canine Centre in
Sequim in November, I had the very great please of working with a 16 week old
Icelandic sheepdog whose mum made him the yummiest dried egg treats. All the
dogs we worked with at Legacy loved these – here was, at least, part of a
solution. A discussion over lunch elicited Scotti’s recipe – Scotti’s Dried Egg
Treats – as well as some valuable information about how I might solve the rest
of my problem.
Apparently there was
a dehydrator on the market that was ideal for drying meats. A little internet
research and I learned all about the Excalibur Dehydrator. One of my KPA friends was coming to Geneva in
December and she offered to bring one across for me if I could get it delivered
to her place before she left (what a cool bunch of people the KPA attract!)
That was a month ago now and since then I’ve gone into full
scale production: beef or lamb liver and kidney, lean beef strips, chicken
breast, chicken livers, hearts and gizzards, beef heart or lamb heart – any
meat that is fresh, fat free and nutritious goes into the machine. And my dogs
love them all!
High quality dog treats are crucial for any sort of
training, but they are of particular value for clicker training; a very small
amount of a high quality treat will elicit a whole range of wonderful behaviors
from your dog in a wide range of situations - even scary or intimidating ones. I have pots of treats all over the place so there is always
something my dogs will work for easily at hand. Because the treats are well
dried, they don’t smell (much) and they keep for weeks (though mine don’t
usually last that long).
An added benefit that I hadn’t figured is that of variety.
Using dried treats like this enables me to keep the anticipation active with both
my dogs. They never quite know what treat they will be getting (and sometimes
it is a mixture of them all) and so are much more willing to work than if they
were getting the same old treat all the time.
I’m happy – my dogs are getting highly nutritious treats that
motivate them to be willing recipients of all my behavior modification sessions, even those conducted by my husband. And my dogs are happy – they think they’ve
got me trained to deliver tasty treats on demand just for performing a few
simple behaviors on cue in distracting situations. Click!
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