Food!
I know that 90% of you take food training for granted. Food shows up and your dog gets happy. For most people that is a good thing, since food is the easiest way to rapidly acquire a range of behaviors needed for a performance dog.
I have one of the 10% that doesn't care all that much about food. She eats to live rather than living to eat. It is possible to acquire behaviors without pronounced food interest, but it brings challenges. The environment needs to be tightly controlled, sessions need to be very short, and patience must be in abundance.
On the plus side, lack of food interest pretty much forces a person to develop the dog's alternative interests and to learn the absolute best ways to manage the dog's behavior. Lots of trial and error is required here since each dog is an individual. Indeed, even with the same dog, strategies should change frequently, depending on the dog's skill level, maturity and focus at any given time.
I'd pretty much given up on training Lyra with food. I had found ways to work around it and she had a high percentage of the skills that I normally use food to acquire.
And then I found myself teaching an on-line class, where I made statements like: "the more motivators you have, the more options you have" and " a dog with balanced drives in all areas gives the most flexibility in training" and "building up all of a dog's drives to their maximum levels allows the most flexibility in training" and "the drives you use are the ones you build."
The first homework assignment included a few questions such as:
"What are the motivators you use the most?" and "which of your dog's motivators are strongest?"
Not surprisingly, there was a very strong correlation between a dog's strongest interests and the motivators the trainers chose most frequently.
Since I'm using Lyra as my demo dog for class, I did the homework assignments as well.
So here's what this esteemed professional trainer discovered - the one who assigned the homework:
I'm guilty of exactly what I tell people to avoid - I abandoned training and playing with food altogether. I spent so much energy on toys and personal play that I built them up very nicely, and I probably hadn't used a cookie in a month.
Wake up call.
After completing the homework assignment a few weeks ago, ,I got the food back out. I worked on her play skills in a dull environment with nothing else to do. I used the food as a toy - I used it to reward simple behaviors in the house where we rarely work. I reinstated some clicker training work - high reinforcement schedule and a couple of new behaviors, shaped entirely with food.
And guess what? When I said "cookie" the other day, she snapped around and looked at me with her ears up. She CARED. When I locked her out of my bedroom to train another dog with food, she sat by the door and complained -she wanted her turn.
And for those of you who love to train with food - I sure see why. It's easy. Effective. Takes no time and space. Hell, I didn't even stand up. And my dog has much better shaping skills than I realized - watching her tail gently wave as she tries to understand what I want - very nice.
Pretty sad when you have to teach a class to take your own advice: Aim for balance. Better late than never.
16 comments
I agree 100% and never give a treat bigger than your little fingernail. Just a small taste makes them work for more.
I found that as Dazzle matured, his caring about food has gradually increased. As a pup he would work for very high value food in a quiet environment, but still very much preferred toys/play and I tried EVERYTHING! I was one that thought that if the dog is not motivated by food, the trainer is doing something wrong or hasn’t found the right food. :-)
Then after about 6 months of age, I had to work just to get him to eat his meals and to keep him from throwing up bile because he was not eating. Even got him vet checked. Around 3 yrs old, his interest in his meals started to come back slowly and now he will usually eat his meals (though not always). And these days he will do more work for high value treats in public (lamb lung, tripe, bits of cooked meat, some canned food, etc.). This may be partly because I didn’t want to give up my food crutch so I just kept trying to use food rewards :-) Even when he only took it politely and spit it on the floor. But I think it is also tied to maturity. I still wouldn’t call him “food motivated” though. It’s just not high on his priorities list, no matter what it is. And I think that is one of the lessons he was meant to teach me (not all dogs are food motivated).
got to disagree at some level, I had an old search and rescue dog that was generally unmotivated by food, he often refused a daily meal if he didn’t want it and food could not keep his attention in training. I could and did use food in low intensity situations and as he got much older food would motivate him but never at the same level as a stick or tug
Agreed. Not all dogs are that motivated by food. Some just aren’t big eaters and are always on the low end of normal weight range. Others have health problems or anxiety issues. So unless you starve some dogs, they’re not going to work for food. And even then, they still might not work for food. Dogs over threshold shut down and food is the last thing from their minds. To insist that a dog enjoys what you want them to find motivating makes no sense. What is the problem with using what the dogs finds most motivating?
Agree. No such thing as a dog not liking food. You Must have very good treats and a hungry dog. Makes sure the dog is not over weight also. I have had students say that their dog does not like food and I have proven them wrong since they like my food.