Clients often tell me that they’ve tried training a particular behaviour using food rewards, but it hasn’t worked – let’s take a look at some of the reasons why that might be the case
1. The food you’re using isn’t high value enough
Research shows that the quality of rewards influences how effective they are. In a study by Riemer et al. (2018), it was found that dogs ran faster to get a higher quality reward (sausage) than a lower quality reward (kibble). What’s more, quantity did not appear to affect the speed at which dogs ran to get the reward – their speed was the same for 1 piece of kibble compared to 5 pieces. Although the researchers didn’t do the same test with the sausage, it is likely that even if you feed your dog a handful of dry treats for coming when you call them, this probably won’t be as effective as using just one high value reward. Examples of high value rewards include cooked meat (e.g. roast chicken), cocktail sausages or hot dogs, tiny cubes of cheese, squeezy liver paste, sprats or JR pâté. If you’re using very high-calorie rewards, make sure you reduce your dog’s meal sizes accordingly so they don’t become overweight during training.
It's also important to adjust the quality of your reward depending on the difficulty of the task. If you’re practicing recall for the first time at the park, where there are lots of dogs and people around, you’ll want to use your dog’s absolute favourite treat! This is a difficult scenario for most dogs, and you want your reward to overpower the ‘natural’ rewards your dog can access in the environment. However, if you’re just practicing something easy at home, you can probably get away with using kibble or store-bought treats instead. In order to figure out which food rewards your dog prefers, you can do a fun test using a muffin tin or tray. Simply place different treats in the various holes then give it to your dog and see which ones they head to first and which ones they skip over!
And some dogs...just eat whatever they get to first!
2. Your rewards aren’t varied enough
There is also evidence that providing a variety of different rewards is important: Bremhorst et al. (2018) found that while dogs may prefer a single, favourite food reward in the short term, introducing variation in reward types may maintain dogs’ motivation to perform tasks over the long term. For example, you might find your dog will recall enthusiastically for chicken to begin with, but that the speed of their response tapers off over time. The answer? Variety! If you’ve used hotdog one week, try using little bits of cheese the next, then roast chicken the week after that – then back to hotdog. You can even mix different treats together in your treat pouch for a lucky dip effect!
Another benefit of introducing reward variety at an early stage is that it can reduce frustration when you start fading out the rewards. Although I always carry treats on walks and will reward my dogs occasionally for a great recall or a nice check-in, sometimes I’ll just reward them with praise instead. However, if your dog has been getting nothing but sirloin steak as a reward for recalling for the past 2 months and you suddenly switch to just praise, they may feel frustrated that the expected outcome hasn’t materialised! This may affect the speed of their response next time, and can also give rise to other unwanted behaviours like demand barking and jumping up. By sometimes rewarding behaviour with high value food and sometimes with slightly lower value food, we are helping them get used to the fact that steak isn’t always on the menu – so they will be more able to cope with a different (non-food) reward in future.
3. Your timing is a little off
When we reward a dog for doing a behaviour we want, we first ‘mark’ it with a verbal ‘yes!’ or a clicker to let the dog know exactly what they did right, and then we provide the reward. Note the sequence here: mark then reward. For example: I ask my dog to sit, they sit, I say ‘yes!’ and one second later I move my hand to take a treat out of my pouch and reward them. If instead I ask my dog to sit, immediately move my hand to get a treat and then say yes, the dog might already have got up out of the sit to come and get the reward – so we are marking and rewarding them for standing, not sitting. Now when we ask them to sit, they will either put their bum on the floor for a micro-second before popping back up again or will just remain standing in anticipation of their treat!
It’s also important not to use treats as ‘bribes’. This is something reward-based trainers often get accused of doing, but in actual fact it doesn’t make for very efficient training! If your dog will only walk on a loose lead when you’re holding a piece of cheese in front of their nose, what happens when you don’t have cheese on you? They’ll go right back to pulling. When teaching loose lead walking, I always encourage my clients to keep their hand in a neutral position by their side, and to only move it towards their treat pouch/pocket once the dog has performed the behaviour we want (e.g. walking 10 steps on a loose lead).
Here my client is maintaining a nice neutral hand position and only moves her hand when I ask her to reward her dog
4. Your delivery needs tweaking
When we think of feeding a dog a treat, we normally imagine simply posting it directly into their mouth. However, this can be a little boring for some dogs! So what alternatives can you try? If your dog likes catching, you can throw a treat in the air for them to catch; if they enjoy chasing things, try bowling it along the floor for them to chase. If your dog loves to sniff, scatter a few treats in the long grass for them to sniff out. The delivery you choose should be appropriate to the behaviour you’re training, too. For example, if I’m training a recall I might opt for a more high-energy food delivery like throwing or bowling the food. If I’m training a calmer behaviour, I would probably opt for a scatter in the grass as sniffing promotes calmness.
The location where you deliver the reward is also super important. A common mistake I see is that owners reward their dog for loose lead walking using the hand on the opposite side to the dog. However, what this means is that the dog starts to come around in front of them in anticipation of the reward – which means they’re constantly tripping over them! Instead, I recommend feeding them from the hand next to them and delivering the reward with your hand flat against the side of your leg. This way, you’re delivering the reward in the position you want the dog to be in when they’re walking on the lead, and they learn that it is a great place to be!
5. Your dog isn’t in the right frame of mind to take food
One problem that many owners experience is that their dog doesn’t appear to be interested in food outside, so they struggle to train using food rewards. Why is this? Ultimately food is essential to survival, so it is unlikely that a dog will not be interested in food at all. However, when a dog is stressed this can dampen their motivation for food as their body is focusing all its energy on preparing for ‘fight or flight’. Equally, if a dog is in a very exciting environment with lots of new sights and smells, their interest in these things might overpower their desire for food rewards. So what can we do about this?
First of all, if your dog is stressed or over-excited in a particular environment then it’s probably not the right place for training. Start off in an easier environment (like your house or garden) where your dog is able to take food, then once the behaviour is really solid and your dog has a strong history of being rewarded for it you can start practicing in more difficult environments. If your dog is really worried by a particular environment, that might be a separate issue that you need to address before trying any other kind of training.
Secondly, if your dog is really into things in the environment you can actually ‘train your dog to eat’ by making their access to those things dependent on them eating a bit of food. For example, as you’re standing at the door about to go out for a walk you can ask your dog to take a small piece of food and only open the door and start your walk when they’ve done so.
Finally, you may want to consider what alternative rewards you could use: if your dog loves tuggy you can reward a good recall with a game; if your dog loves sniffing, you can reward them for walking on a loose lead by giving them the go ahead to sniff a really interesting lamp post!
I hope you found this troubleshooting guide helpful! If you’re still struggling to use food to train your dog, please do get in touch – together we can figure out exactly what the best reward strategy is for your dog so that you can finally achieve your training goals.