Training? She's TOO food motivated

mfeo24

After about 2 years of halfway training we're now dediated to every day work with our 3 year old mixed breed. Starting about 2 weeks ago FI began using her entire breakfast and dinner kibbles as training treats, so she now has to work for every bite of food she gets. The first few days it was working great and she's now very eager to please. She's mastering her known commands (without distractions right now) and learning 2 more. She tries to anticipate the next command before she's been told, but that can be fixed by giving her part of her meal before training so she's not starving and over eager.

My question: She won't do any of this for me, unless she's SURE I have food, and she'll hesitate on doing it for FI unless she's rather sure he has food. I know all about phasing out treats, and I know that we're still early on, but FI is already discourged and about to give up. He says that there's no point in training if she's not listening and just chasing the treats. What can I say to make him understand that she'll eventually hear the words and food won't be such a motivator? What can I do to move her along in listening to me and not chasing food? I realize that doing this with her regular meals may be contentious, but she seems to need that consistancy and quantity of training, if we do it outside of meal time the treats have to be pretty stellar (steak, hotdogs) for her to listen, and I can't be feeding her a hotdog a day...

 Thanks !

YellowUmbrella

Treats/food are great to use when training, but there can come a point in time where you're bribing them to behave rather than rewarding their good behavior. Does that make sense?

I'm not one of the most well-versed training people on the board, so hopefully someone else will chime in with some ideas. Here's what I have so far:

- Training should happen all the time and in different places. Work a few commands into each part of your day, not just as meal times. She shouldn't be able to tell that you're starting a "training session" - just seamlessly add it into your normal routines.

- Are you holding up pieces of food when you ask for commands? That's not good, because going forward if she can see that your hand is empty she's not going to do what you're asking. Do you have a treat pouch where you can keep them out of view until she's done what you ask?

- Have you heard of clicker training? The *click* is the immediate reward before the treat, so I've heard that it can be easier to wean off of treats when you use that method.

 

Good luck!

LuckyAngel07

In addition to PP's advice:

Try feeding her about half her meal and simply reserving the rest of her food for whenever you incorporate further training. If you find you have too much "training" food to feasibly use up, just feed her more of it in her meal. You can also find other training foods she loves that won't add many calories to her day (things like green beans, pieces of carrot, blueberries, etc). Then you can feed her her whole meal and use your designated training foods throughout the day for your sessions.

Make sure that you are also verbally praising along with the food reward. Your dog will learn to soak up the affection and attention as her reward and not always require the food also. Our puppy is just about 11 months old, and while she's still more reliable in responding to commands if she knows we have food rewards, she will also still listen and respond without knowing we have food for her, because she knows that if she listens, we'll give her love and she ultimately wants to make us happy.

Mrs.Hizzo

Try gradually delaying the time between her response and the treat. You can give her a key word (like a click) to let her know she's done what you want, if you aren't already. "Yes" works well. So, you'd spend a couple days saying "Yes!" as soon as she does what you want, and still treat her right away. Once she's associating the "yes!" with the treat, you can tell her to sit, say "Yes! Good sit!" when she does it, and then give her the treat. And then slowly draw it out more and more. At some point, you can start to treat randomly. You want to do it often enough that she always thinks there's a decent chance she might get something, but not so often that she thinks you're always going to shove food in her mouth.

nital

Get a treat pouch so you always have treats on you.  Once she listens better, then start weaning away from treats.

If she starts anticipating commands, ignore her.  Se is rewarded for doing what you tell her to do, not for thinking for you.