Treats and Training: How To Make Those Calories Count

Food should function as a core part of your life with your dog. photo: AdobeStock

It goes without saying that food is yummy to both dogs and humans. But it’s also an effective tool you should be using when you are training or managing your dog during everyday life. Whether you are using food to strengthen learned behaviors, teach new behaviors, change responses, provide enrichment, or prevent behavior problems from being rehearsed, food should function as a core part of your life with your dog.

Using food to teach new behaviors is efficient. You can give your dog a bit of information in the form of a food treat to help them understand a new behavior and to teach cues like sit, down, roll over, and other basic skills. It takes the dog only a few seconds to eat that snack and be ready for you to provide a bit more information again. This results in a streamlined learning process. 

Of course, you could teach behaviors with other reinforcers such as toys or play, but it’s generally going to slow down that learning pipeline. If you need to play with your dog for 30 seconds as a reward vs. giving them a treat which they can eat in five seconds or less, you can see that one way is much more time efficient and practical for teaching a new skill.

Giving your dog food for behaviors you like and want to see again acts as a reinforcer in most situations. The behavior becomes stronger and will generally happen more reliably when reinforced with food. 

Because feeding your dog food is part of everyday life, you might as well use some of those calories for training purposes. An easy technique is to place a jar on the counter and put 30 pieces of food in it at the start of the day. Feed your dog a piece of food anytime you notice them doing a behavior you like and would like to see more of - things like lying down calmly, being quiet, chewing on a toy, keeping four feet on the floor, giving you attention, or coming when you call them. Aim to have the jar empty by the end of the day. Your dog will soon be showing you more of the behaviors you like. 

In addition, food can be used to help your dog respond differently to a particular trigger or stimulus by creating positive associations. For the majority of dogs, eating food produces pleasurable feelings. If you feed your dog after they notice a particular trigger, you can gradually change the way they respond to that trigger and eventually their behavior will change to reflect that. 

If your dog is nervous when he hears a loud noise and runs to hide, you can use food to start building a positive association with the triggering sound. As he is  running to his hiding spot, go to the fridge and grab some high value food such as cheese, meat, or peanut butter. Take the food to him and offer it to him to eat. In time, your dog will begin to associate sudden loud noises with food and, therefore, with pleasurable feelings. Once this happens, you’ll see his behavior start to improve. Remember, you can’t reinforce fear or other emotions, only behaviors, so feeding your dog food when they are nervous won’t make things worse. Rather, it will make things better.

Enrichment in general should be a daily practice with your dog. This means providing novel and interesting experiences for our dogs to better improve the quality of their lives and to ensure their needs are met. Food is an excellent way to provide enrichment to your pup. Try hiding treats around the house and let your dog search and find them. Place food in a canine puzzle toy and let your dog figure out how to get the food out. Toss pieces of food across the room, one by one, and let your dog chase and eat them. The possibilities for fun are endless!

Food is also an excellent way to manage and prevent problem behaviors from being rehearsed or repeated. The first step of behavior modification is to arrange your environment and your own behavior so your dog is set up for success and isn’t able to practice behaviors you don’t want to get worse. To do this, try using food as a “cookie magnet” to avoid the unwanted behaviors before they happen.  If you see something your dog might bark at, place a piece of food on your dog’s nose and lure him away before he barks. If you notice a cat up ahead on the sidewalk, toss a handful of food in the grass to distract your dog and keep him from noticing. If your dog hates bath time, smear some peanut butter on the bathtub wall to get his attention away from the dreaded soap and water. 

Finally, it’s important to keep being generous with food rewards, even after your dog becomes fluent in the behaviors you’re seeking. We live in a capitalist society, so many people may be tempted to apply these beliefs to the working relationship with their dog. As soon as a dog is doing well with a behavior, they’ll ask, “How can I get my dog to work more for less pay?” But why do we need our dog to work harder for less once they are doing well? Shouldn’t we pay them more for excelling at their tasks? 

It’s my belief that we should be generous with rewards and not seek a level of training where rewards cease to exist or exist only sparsely. A skilled trainer can teach you how to use non-food reinforcers effectively so you don’t always have to rely on food. But if we love our dogs, let’s make sure we maintain our roles as generous snack givers - while helping them maintain a healthy weight, of course. 

Generosity in the form of food is a gift we can give to our dogs that they’ll surely appreciate. The fact that we can use it to elicit the behaviors we want is just the icing on the cake.