Jo's Old Site

When I trained my first dog whose pet name was Deena, or Dee I didn’t use food but I did use praise; then why I didn’t use food is because I found with her that I didn’t have to as other methods worked: though it wasn’t until we got up to doing utility dog training that I started using food with her, and then after a while she got so good at doing an exercise that is called scent discrimination that I didn’t have to use it anymore.

However, since then I had and still use food when I train; although people who are dog trainers are either for it or against it though the main problems with using food is: knowing how to use it properly, as some people give their dog the food without giving them the praise. This I feel can make some dogs too focus on the food as when a trainer does this they are really just relying on the one method, and also when the dog’s owner stops using food it can really affect the performance of their dog if they also trial their dog in obedience.

The advantages of a trainer using more than one method to motivate dogs is that they can swap, and thus not having to be so heavily reliant on just the one motivator when the trainer is training their dog: as one very common argument about using food as a reward is that it is thought that dogs trained this way only works for the food and not for the dog’s trainer.

Then what is a reward? A reward is a motivator that the dog likes such as food, toys, praise, games, and tricks, then putting it another way it is in fact anything that a dog reacts positive to.