Dog training: Phasing out food lures and rewards

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Whether you know it or not, what you have been doing here is using food treats in two extremely useful ways: as lures to entice your pup into different body positions and as rewards for the pup to reinforce correct responses when it promptly moves into the desired position. Certainly, food is one of the very best possible lures to entice a dog to perform a variety of responses without coercion, and food is a pretty effective reward for most dogs. A lure/reward training method, especially one employing training treats both as lures and rewards, is without out a doubt the quickest, easiest, most efficient, most effective and most enjoyable way to complete the first two stages of training: 1) to teach the dog the meaning of our instructions and 2) to teach the dog the relevance of our instructions.

Whereas one can never give too many food treats during temperament training exercises, many owners are seduced by the effectiveness of food training when teaching obedience and 1) fail to wean themselves from using food as a lure and 2) give far too many food treats as rewards. Owners quickly become dependent on using food as a lure, since they feel the dog will not comply otherwise. And sure enough, the dog's compliance quickly becomes contingent on the owner having food in the hand. Similarly, giving too many rewards in training is the quickest way to decrease their value and produce a 'spoiled dog'.

Food lures and rewards are so valuable in training that it would be unfair to the dog and masochistic for the owner not to use food. However, the number one item on the training agenda is to begin to phase out food as soon as the pup responds correctly, i.e., following the pup's very first sit! Obviously, no one wants to carry around a smorgasbord of doggie treats for the rest of the pup's life in order to get it to respond obediently. Food may always remain an occasional ingredient of any training program - as a special reward for the occasional excellent response and always as a lure for teaching any new exercise. However, it is important the dog's willingness to perform is not contingent on the owner having food or other lures and rewards.

The dog must be convinced that it wants to comply by teaching it the relevance of our requests. Otherwise, the puppy's initial dramatic learning spree will be followed by an equally dramatic forgetting junket. Just because the pup knows the meaning of our requests does not mean it will necessarily respond. Although  [Continued]

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