I only advocate the use of something called ‘positive reinforcement’. This means I will teach you to use rewards when training your dog.  When your dog gets a reward, they will associate this with whatever behaviour they have just done and will be more likely to do that same thing again next time. For example, if you give your dog a piece of food they love when they raise a paw, they are more likely to do this again the next time they are in the same situation. Rewards can be anything your dog really wants, enjoys, and is motivated by.  For example, this could be food, verbal praise, a game of chase the ball, affection, even a good scratch!

Reward based training helps build a positive bond between you and your dog, because it’s fun! This also means that it can help build confidence and encourage your puppy to think for themselves. We also know through scientific research, that owners who train using rewards, report fewer behaviour problems in their dogs.

We tend to think of the word ‘treat’ as something ‘naughty’ and unhealthy, such as a huge slice of cake. This in turn makes us think that a dog treat should also be something unhealthy. I think it more appropriate to think of ‘rewards’ rather than ‘treats.’  

We’ve all seen that children now have a reward chart to promote good behaviour or enthusiasm, we don’t give them a chocolate bar every time they get something right but we do give them a reward/point to build up to something special.

Using food to train is extremely effective as it helps dogs to learn. This is because seeking or eating stimulates the ‘thinking’ part of the brain to help a dog to begin to think more rationally and promote calmness. This is due to the raising levels of dopamine created.

A reward doesn’t have to be food, although food is often most effective when we are training new behaviours – after all, all dogs need to eat! And food is easier to use if we want to get many quick repetitions into our training.  We can also grade food easily … a low value dry biscuit for an established behaviour in a low distraction environment, but high value chicken if teaching something more difficult, new or if in a very distracting environment.

No, not at all. We generally use lots of rewards when a dog is learning something new, but we reduce the frequency of food rewards once they understand what we would like from them.

The frequency of food rewards is more important than the quantity. Having lots of very small food rewards means you can reward 10 behaviours with the same amount of food as 1 large piece of food.

If you should become concerned about your dogs’ weight, you can simply reduce your dog’s meal time allowance to accommodate for the extras used in the day.

In training we only use tiny pea-sized pieces of food (and even smaller).  The smaller the food pieces the more you can reward.  Dogs don’t mind how much food there is, it’s more about the taste – especially as human foods are much better to use than shop-bought dog treats.  Although we use cheese, cocktail sausages and dried liver quite a lot, dogs will happily enjoy apple, carrots, blueberries and other healthy alternatives.

Not if you train the dog correctly. Food is used to help teach the initial behaviour, but then you’ll wean your dog off the food.

It’s a common perception that using food to train is glorified bribery, however there is a big difference between bribery and reward. The main difference is that a BRIBE comes BEFORE, whereas a REWARD comes AFTER. If a dog is being bribed it will only ‘perform’ when there is food in sight or on offer, whereas a dog who is rewarded will offer a behaviour in the hope of getting something afterwards.

When used effectively a dog will offer things that have been previously rewarded in the hope they will be rewarded again, when your dog is happily offering a behaviour you can reduce how often you reward that behaviour with food or play and begin to use environmental rewards instead.

You won’t need to buy anything in particular for the programme, but a clicker would be useful, a training lead (we like the Halti training lead), a flat collar, and you may choose to buy a harness (we like the Perfect Fit by Dog Games).

A clicker is a tool used to tell your dog ‘yes, you got it.’ It’s an excellent way of marking the precise behaviour you want – then you follow up with a reward.

Some people find clickers hard to coordinate with a treat bag, lead and a dog. In that case, a marker word like “yes!”or “good!” can be used instead of a clicker.