Rewards and Motivation
| Rewards We use the term reward to refer to any item that the dog will seek out and work for. Food Rewards In the early phases of training, we highly recommend using some type of food reward. Food rewards are easy to deliver to the dog and it is obvious if the dog finds them rewarding. (If they don’t eat it, then they are not finding the treat rewarding enough to work for it.) Food rewards may encompass anything from dry kibble to steak. It is beneficial to experiment with many types of rewards to find out what rewards create mild interest and what gets them really excited. You will also want to vary the reward depending on the situation. A dog may follow you around the house if you have one piece of dry kibble in your hand, but you may get a very different response at a dog park. A piece of kibble can hardly compete with the option to play with other dogs for some dogs. When you are in the early phases of training, it is vital to find a reward that the dog will work for. If you cannot get the dog’s attention, then it will be extremely difficult to show them what you want them to do. Other Type Of Rewards: There are numerous other types of rewards in the dog’s environment. Some of these rewards may rank higher than food in some situations. Some dog will find playing with other dogs or chasing after toys much more rewarding than food. For many dogs, going for a walk is the most rewarding occurrence of the day. A dog will seek out rewarding situations and will avoid situations that are not intrinsically rewarding. This is extremely important to keep in mind when asking your dog to do something for you in the initial stages of training. Example: Bella likes to bolt out of the house and sniff around neighbors houses. Her owner tries repeatedly to call Bella to return to the house. Bella has learned from her owner’s prior actions that if she comes to her owner, the owner will take Bella inside and then give her a lecture on not running away. Bella does not want to come to the owner because this is not a rewarding situation from Bella’s point of view. So what should the owner do? For now, I will leave this up to you to think about various options. Remember that if what you want and what Bella wants differ greatly than you will have a hard time training her. Rewards That We Recommend: *This will vary from dog to dog, but this is usually fairly consistent with dogs we work with. For instance, you can see we have listed “toys” and “praise and petting” under High Value and Low Value Rewards due to the fact that these rewards vary widely between dogs and can be very contextual. High Value Rewards • Human Grade Meats(Chicken, beef, pork) • Cheese (We like string cheese) • Toys • Meeting Other Dogs • High Grade Pet Treats (Wellness Treats) • Peanut Butter • Hot Dogs • Praise and Petting • Sniffing scents left by other animals • Going Outside Low Value • Dry Kibble • Milk Bones and other Hard Treats • Toys • Praise and Petting |
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