Hand feeding, redirection, and rewards!

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Before you can teach your dog Sit, Down, Stay, Leave It, or anything else, you need something much more basic:

You need their attention.

In this episode, I explain why hand feeding is one of my favorite ways to build that foundation. Hand feeding is not really about feeding your dog out of your hand. It is about making yourself valuable, creating engagement, and giving you structured opportunities every day to practice the skills your dog is going to need later.

I also walk through several of the games I use during hand feeding, including:

• Sit with a positive marker and release word.
• Down while beginning to build duration.
• The Turnaround Game to create a default Sit and attention.
• Go Find It and Come Here to begin building recall.
• Leave It as a positive redirection cue rather than a punishment.

We also break down the beginning stages of Leave It using a simple progression: hand, foot, leash. Start inside the house where distractions are low, teach the dog to disengage and come back to you, and only then begin taking the skill into harder environments.

One other important point: you can fade the lure, but you should not eliminate the reward.

Good behavior stays strong because something reinforces it. Food may eventually become praise, affection, play, access to something the dog wants, or another reward—but good behavior still needs to pay.

Related K.I.S.S. Dog Training Resources

Hand Feeding / Getting Started Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsbJO2JoPmqJv6cbmelVrTFQt_B4za1OL

This is the hand-feeding playlist discussed in the episode and includes the foundational games used to build attention and basic skills.

Watch Me Command
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3eSh90jisw

This video focuses specifically on teaching attention and eye contact during hand feeding.

Watch Me — Written Guide
https://kissdogtraining.com/how-to-get-your-dogs-attention-teach-watch-me/

Leave It on the Leash
https://kissdogtraining.com/leave-it-on-leash/

These continue the same progression discussed in the episode: first build attention and disengagement, then begin applying those skills around greater distractions.

K.I.S.S. Dog Training
Dog Training Ain’t Cheap... Experience Counts.
https://kissdogtraining.com/

If you found this episode helpful, please take a minute to leave a review. Reviews are one of the best ways to help other dog owners find the podcast. Follow the show so you do not miss future episodes, and share this one with somebody who keeps trying to teach commands before they have their dog’s attention.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to another Kiss Dog Training Podcast episode with professionally certified dog trainer Mike Deeth. You have dog training questions? Mike has dog training answers. Mike is coming up with all the info. Stay tuned!

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Hey guys, welcome back. It's Mike Weekiss Dog Training. Today we're gonna tackle another common question in dog training. Have you ever asked yourself why your dog doesn't pay attention, why your dog doesn't listen well? And of course, that leads to the other question of why my dog doesn't do what I ask it to do. Well, that today is what we're going to cover. Okay, guys, let's let's look at this realistically. Before we can teach our dogs to do any skills or anything like that, the first thing we have to do is have their attention, right? Okay, so those people who jump right in and start teaching skills, I want you to sit, I want you to lay down, I want you to do a watch me, I want you to do a stay, I want you to do a leave it without having attention are kind of beating their head against a brick wall. In a sense, you have to give the dog a reason to pay attention, and once we have that attention, then we can start teaching skills. Okay, so it's not so much that dogs fail at attention, they they really fail at the commands because we've gone too fast and we flipped the script. You know, also expecting attention or skills without some kind of foundation first is really silly. So the question is, what is that foundation? Well, that foundation is hand feeding, okay? And you've heard me talk about it a lot, but hang around and I'm gonna get really specific about exactly what hand feeding is and why we do it. Okay, let's just start with an old saying. How many of you have heard don't bite the hand that feeds? Okay, to me, that is kind of the idea of hand feeding. How can we be the boss, be the leader, be in charge, but at the same time not being a total jerk? I was gonna use a little bit more profane language, but you know, without having to resort to some of the more, you know, difficult and hard techniques that are out there in dog training, how can we how can we accomplish everything we want? Okay, well, if we hand feed the dog, let's face it, what is the most important resource a dog has is food. And if that food always comes through you, then you control the resource of food, and that just made you a leader. You don't have to yell, you don't have to scream, you don't have to use nasty tools like choke chains, prong collars, and shot collars. Um, it's not necessary. All you got to do is have some basic resource control. Now, once we have that resource control, we can go ahead and start teaching skills. But the first thing I do with clients is for 30 days we get rid of the dog bowl and we simply hand feed the dogs. Every piece of kibble comes from a human hand. Now, I'm sneaky about it, and then in that first session, I'm sending you a video of about 15 games to play while you're hand feeding your dog, so that while you're setting this hand feeding routine, you're also practicing some of the skills that you're gonna need as we move forward in dog training. So, the hand feeding is simply that foundation that we need to get what we want out of the dog. And the most important thing we want is attention. All right, let's dig into these games a little bit more. Now, I'm not gonna go through all 15 right here, but if you're sneaky, you will go out to the YouTube channel, which I think you're already on, that's why you're watching the video, and you will look for the playlist called hand feeding. Okay. And once you find that, you can see some of the games that we play. You can even go back and find some of the puppy videos where you find even easier versions of these games that I play with little bitty puppies like 8, 10, 12 weeks old. So let's kind of look at it. When you ask your dog to sit, you need to mark it. You need to say thank you, or you need to click, or you need to have some kind of positive mark. Now, most people right after positive mark will then hand the dog the treat. I don't want you to do that. I want you to say sit when the dog sits. You're gonna say thank you, you're gonna count one, two, three, four, five. You're gonna drop your hand to your side and say, All done. Now we're using a release word. And the dog is getting used to, okay, I put my rear end on the ground, I get the positive mark, he counts to five, he releases me to his side, I get the piece of food. And you can see that a little better in the video, but what that is is I'm cheating you towards a stay. That five seconds is the very beginning stages of stay. So that's one of the games that we can play. Um, down, we want to be able to teach our dog to lay down and calm down. And the same thing, we're still going to, I'm gonna lure the dog all the way into a down, and I'm gonna hold my hand with the treat right on their nose, and I'm gonna say thank you. I'm not releasing the treat yet, but then I go one, two, three, four, five, and then I move my hand back, and the dog gets up out of the down and comes and gets the treat. I'm releasing out of the command. Again, that's a trick with stay. Um, the other one I love is the turnaround game. So once I've got like sit going, okay, I can do a sit, I can say thank you, one, two, three, four, five, release the dog. But then I can turn my back on the dog, which at the very beginning is going to confuse the dog completely. Some will automatically walk around front, look you in the eyeballs, and sit their rear end down, and you can reward that releasing to your side. Other dogs you will have to kind of lure back around. But the idea is every time I turn my back, I want my dog to default to come around front, sit, and look at me, and then I'll give him a treat. Then I'll take two or three steps away and I'll stop and I'll let the dog come around front and sit. I am teaching a default sit. How cool would it be to have a dog on a walk that would automatically sit every time you stopped? Well, this little turnaround game is one of those first building block foundational skills that teach that stopping in every driveway and getting a sit. Or whenever I stop, you turn around, sit and pay attention to me, not all the distractions in the world. And then I guess you know, a fourth one is what I like to call go find it and come here. So as I'm hand feeding the dog, I'll take a piece of dog food and throw it across the room and say, Go find it, and they go get it. And then when they get it, I go, come here, and then I get them to sit and I say thank you, and one, two, three, four, five, and all done. So these are just four of those games that I play while we're hand feeding. And most people think it's the hand feeding that's the most important. It's really not the hand feeding. We're just using the hand feeding to get to what we want, which is a dog who's constantly paying attention to us to find out what we want. And when you have a dog who's constantly asking you, what do you want? You have a dog who's paying attention, and training's gonna be a lot easier. So now when I say what's the first thing we really want, we want a redirection cue. We want a leave it command. Now, a lot of trainers will make a leave it command all about no no bad dog. Okay. My dogs love to hear the word leave it because it means if they quit paying attention to a trigger or a distraction and turn around and pay attention to dad, they get a reward. So some people will teach a leave it with um kind of a grumpy voice. Gotta be in control, gotta be dominant, gotta be alpha. And I'm the exact opposite. Now I've already got a big voice, and right now I'm getting over a cold, so it probably sounds even worse. But when I say leave it, it's hey, leave it. There's no there's no gruff in my voice because it's not a no-no bad dog command. It is a quit paying attention to that pay attention to me command. So if there is one command that we're going to teach first, it's going to be that leave it command. So the next thing we're going to talk about is how do you do that.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

If you love the topics you've been listening to, remember that Mike has written tons of books on dog training, and all are available on Amazon.com. Plus, you can also find them all on audible.com as audiobooks, and you can even get them in print on Mike's website, kissdogtraining.com. Just search the web for KISSDog Training or Mike Deeth, D-E-A-T-H-E. Before we get to Mike, allow us to take a quick pledge break. Buzz Sprout hosts our podcast, and you can find us at any of your favorite podcast providers by simply searching for Kiss Dog Training or Mike Death. You can also find a direct link to our podcast on our website, KissDogTraining.com, by looking in the About tab and just clicking on the word podcast. It's at that link where you'll find a subscription link where you can donate as little as $3 a month to help us provide monthly podcasts and information on positive, science-based training methods for dogs and their owners. And we would appreciate that help so much. Mike is back now to help answer even more training questions. Here's Mike.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Basically, think of it this way: step one is your hand, step two is your foot, step three is the leash. And that's all inside the house. Now, this is a very beginning foundational part of leave it. Eventually we take it outside to the front yard, to the walk, distractions of dogs, people, kids, you name it. But today, all we're gonna really focus on is how do we teach this command inside the house as a foundational, very beginning stage. So, step one, I'm gonna put a treat on the ground and I'm gonna put my hand over the top of it, and the dog is going to be sniffing all over my hand and trying to get to the treat because that's what they want. And I'm going to say, leave it, and I already have another treat in my hand, and I toss it. And the dog goes away from my hand and chases the treat I just threw. So if you think about it, in this first stage of teaching, leave it, me covering it and tossing a treat away, I'm just teaching them, leave that alone and go over there and get your reward. Leave this alone, go over there and get your reward. That is step one. Step two, we then start dropping the treat on the ground, covering it with our foot. The dog is now sniffing by our foot, and I say, leave it. The dog is used to me throwing it. So the dog, if you're lucky, will look up at you. And the minute they look up, you go, good dog, all done. And you hand them the reward. The next time I'm gonna put my foot on, I'm gonna say leave it, and the dog looks up. And the key to this second game is eye contact. If the dog quits looking at the treat and looks at me, that's the key to getting the reward. So we're getting closer to an actual leave it. I might have to make kissing noises, the, you know, kind of sound to get them to quit looking at my foot and look up at my face. I mean, you have to lure at this point. This is very beginning kind of training. But once we can get the hand and the toss, the foot and the look, now we put the dog on leash, and I have a second person go out in front of me about 10 feet and put a pile of treats on the ground. And I'm just gonna hold on to the leash. I'm not gonna let them get to it, and I'm gonna say, hey, leave it. And again, I might have to use that, you know, or you know, whatever noise I might be using to get the dog turn around. I could even, if the dog is completely ignoring me and so focused on the pile of treats, I can just start walking backwards. Now keep in mind here, I'm not talking about a leash correction here. I don't want you jerking on the dog. But if I calmly walk backwards, the turn, the pressure I put on the leash is going to get the dog to turn their head towards me, and my hands already gonna be by my side going, hey, here's the reward, dude. Leave that alone, come over here. And I can kind of get it started there. Another little trick, even before probably you would go to the leash, is I would say leave it and drop the treat on the ground. And I always like trying to do this game on a hardwood floor. And the reason I like doing it on a hardwood floor is the dog hears the click of the treat hitting the ground, they turn around and come back to you. So, again, there's a lot of luring in getting the dog to do it. And yes, by definition, I guess backing up is a leash correction, okay? But it is not a correction, it is more a hey, turn around, come on, look at my hand, look at my hand, you know, don't focus on that, focus on me. Again, what are we talking about through all of these conversations? How do I get the dog to pay attention and focus on me? So if you can go through those three basic hand-foot leash inside the living room or kitchen of your house, now you're gonna stand a chance when you go out into the real world. This is probably my biggest frustration is people will immediately walk outside with their dog on leash and expect them to pay attention. You haven't taught them squat yet. You know, it would be like trying to do calculus before you understand what please excuse my dear Aunt Sally or Pedmas or however you learned it was. You have to know the order of operation. It has to start small and build up. Okay, so I'm gonna finish this little three-part conversation with a question. When can I quit using treats? Okay, well, I always answer that question with a question. And I say, When can your boss quit writing you a paycheck? Seriously. I love my job. I think next to just about anybody I know, I like my job more than just about anybody likes their job because I get to play with dogs. But I still don't do it for free. I have bills to pay just like everybody else. We all go to work for a reason. And we all get paid because we either do a good job or a bad job. When we don't do a good job, we usually don't get paid. So for somebody to think that at some point in this equation of owning a dog, that I don't know any longer have to reward the dog is just I would say stupid, but I'm gonna be nice and say silly. Um, there's always got to be a reward. There's got to be that connection between you and your dog if you did it right. Here, here you go. Now, at the very beginning of this process, we're obviously gonna start with food because food is the most important and easiest to use resource that a dog covets. Um, that doesn't mean as we move forward that the reward might not become a kind word, or love behind the ears, or a chance to play with a tennis ball, or any other type reward. But do not be silly enough to think that at some point you're gonna quit rewarding good behavior. I mean, let's face it, it's Psych 101. The things that are the most rewarding get repeated, and the things that are the least rewarding go away or extinguish because there's no reinforcement. Okay? So it's it's it's a kind of good way to kind of tie this topic up in a bow of, you know, it's been one of those things in dog training for a long time of, well, you can fade the lure at a certain point. Notice what I said there. You can fade the lure, but you can't fade the reward. And this is a good opportunity for me to kind of make sure you understand this. Uh, I'm gonna use the example of getting in a crate. Um, with a puppy, I might toss a treat into the crate. Okay, I just lured the dog to go into the crate. If we lure too much, that becomes a bribe, and then the dog starts looking to see if you have food in your hand. As quickly as possible, we have to turn that lure into a reward, which means the dog has to give me the behavior first, then I give the reward second, which means I might have to stand at the back of the crate, lure the dog, and then come around front and give them the reward. Um, in the case here with leave it, you saw me covering, well, you haven't seen me, but you heard me describe it. Go watch the video. I cover it with my hand, I say leave it, and I toss the tree. That's kind of a lure. But very quickly, I'm going to covering it with my foot, and now you have to quit looking at that and look at me, and now that's a reward. So I think it's a really important distinction that luring is part of training, it's part of learning, it's part of the process, but it can't be used too long. And in fact, what I've usually heard research people talk about is six to 12 repetitions. You should be getting away from the lure and going to a reward, so it doesn't become a bribe. But don't ever think that you're gonna get rid of the reward because that's how we keep behavior strong. So it's Mike with Kiss Dog Training. Hopefully these three little topics helped you. And you come back next time and we'll talk about something else. Have a great new year, happy new year. Let's hope for 2026 to be awesome for everybody.