Ep 117 To Feed or Not To Feed: Why Treats Could Be Stalling Your Training Progress & What To Do About It

Is your dog constantly x-raying your hands for a treat? Is food ruling your relationship with your dog? Have you ever been worried that your dog cares more about the food you have than you - perhaps they don’t seem that interested in what you’re saying, your training progress has slowed, or it may have even come to a complete standstill. This week we’re discussing a topic that we think every dog owner should know about: what to do when treats seem to take center stage in your behaviour training sessions. We’ll talk about why this can happen over time (so you can avoid those traps) and explore some helpful tips and tricks you can use to shift the spotlight and make YOU the center of your dog’s attention once again! 

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Whether your dog is unpredictable with other dogs or predictably bad…

Whether it looks like freezing, barking, lunging or running away…

Whether you are just starting out on your dog-owning journey or your dog has been labelled as having a “behaviour problem”…

… this episode is for you and is going to give you huge insights!

Want to join the Help! My Dog Online HUB? Here's the link: www.helpmydog.com/hub

Dr Tom Mitchell is a world-renowned veterinarian, behaviourist and dog trainer and director of the Behavet behaviour clinic (rated Excellent on Trustpilot), which sees over 400 pet behaviour consultations each and every month no matter where you are in the world. In 2023, he founded Help! My Dog, an online dog behaviour learning platform to help even more owners all over the world and show that dog behaviour transformation is not only possible but it's FUN, with the right know-how!

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Useful Links:
Follow Help! My Dog on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helpmydogofficial/
Schedule a Consultation with Behavet: https://www.beha.vet/
Follow Behavet on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/behavet

Transcript

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If you're concerned that your dog is only in it for the food, then my advice would be well, let's get the food out of your hands. Yeah? Before we dive in, a warning. The content of this podcast may not be appropriate for some young listeners. This is real life, and that means that sometimes it can be a little bit graphic. So listen on at your own peril. As a veterinarian, dog behaviourist, best-selling author and trainer over the past decade, I've had an obsession with transforming the behaviour of dogs. Understanding their brains and creating practical strategies that you can implement easily at home. I know all too well when the dream you imagined when you first got your dog is far from your daily reality. In fact, out of the blue, a few months ago, my little dog Gorse was bitten by a dog 20 times her size. And suddenly our life of stress-free walks, a calm and cuddly household, and being teammates was replaced with reactivity, anxiety, and worrying about what's around the next corner. I'm Dr. Tom, this is the Help My Dog Podcast, and this is me documenting that journey of transformation, sharing my knowledge and experience with you, and having a few laughs along the way. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Help My Dog Podcast. And today we're we're gonna do a listener's question, but I'll be honest, it's like it's like 150 listeners' question. Um, and it relates to food and the use of food, especially on walks, but just generally to guide your dog's behaviour, right? And so, for example, I've got one of them in front of me. Sounds like a very good game. I've tried using food on walks, my dog becomes more interested in food than me. Or my dog behaves when I have the food, but they don't behave when I don't have the food, right? Um, and I thought it'd be worth doing an episode on this and um uh and diving into it a little bit. Admittedly, you can't dive into it loads. Those of you are in the the Help My Dog Hub, which is like our membership where there are all the video lessons and tutorials and live teaching and Q ⁇ A in the Facebook group and every everything, um you guys will know that you have access to these resources to uh to really change that. But I want to give you three tips as a podcast listener that I think will will create meaningful, meaningful change, right? Um so the first one is always asking yourself the question: are you using the food as a lure for behavior for good behavior for the choice that you want, or are you using it as a reward for the choice that you want? And it's subtle, isn't it? But there is a key distinction there in that there is a time and a place for luring the choices that we want, right? But whenever we're in on the side of the fence of we're luring the choices that we want, what we need to be mindful of is, well, how am I sequentially fading that law, right? Because I've created the choice, but now I need to reduce dependence on the law, yeah? So how do I make food maybe less a part of this picture? How do I make it less about pointing out that I have food, right? How do I make it more that the dog is do making the choice and then I am following up with a reward experience? Yeah, and it's subtle, but I find that that a useful way to ask to answer that question. And nearly always it's down to timing, right? Nearly always it's down to um a combination of timing, as in maybe maybe not being so quick to reward and seeing that your dog is committed to that choice and then making that choice to stay close, or they're they've they're they've committed to that choice of orienting to you on a walk because they're still orienting to you after two seconds, and then you might deliver the piece of food, right? Um, but also it comes down to responsibility. Put in some responsibility on your dog. The way that we might put some responsibility on our dog might be to withhold reward and increase, you know, the the timing between reward, as I as I just said. But the other way that we might put responsibility on our dog is see if they'll make the choice of their own accord, right? Or they'll meet you halfway and then you can follow up with a piece of food. So it's a very subtle question and a very subtle difference, but it really helps guide you as to which side of the line that you are on. Now, the second tip that I have for you is if you're concerned that your dog is only in it for the food, then my advice would be well, let's get the food out of your hands. Yeah? Get the food in your pocket, in a tree pouch, somewhere, um, and um have and start to more clearly mark your mark the choices that that you that you want to grow in your dog. So mark them with a marker word like a good or a yes or whatever you want to say, and then make a really clear point to your dog of that you're going into your pocket, you're retrieving a piece of food, and you are delivering that reward experience. Because then what you move away from is a dog that is x-raying your hands, right? Um instead, what they're doing is they're trying to figure out how to trigger that reward experience from you, but the food is out of your hands. It becomes, you become the bridge between your dog and the food. Whereas often with it could easily be that we set up a situation where we're the jailkeeper of the food and our dog's like, just let me have it. Yeah? And there is a there is again a clear distinction there that I think is um, that I think is really, really powerful. The third tip that I've got for you, and I think this is, hey guys, I just want to take a moment to answer a question that has been coming in in literally 10 emails a day, and that is how can we help you with your dog's behavior struggle, whether that be reactivity, separation, anxiety, resource guarding, maybe you've got multi-dog household struggle right now, maybe your dog's just so overaroused on a walk that they just can't listen to you and they're chasing everything inside. Like, can I get Tom's help? Um, and the answer is that actually you can, and you can do that by booking a behavet behavior consultation. That's where literally my team give you the plan on how to transform your struggle and get you to that dream that that made you get a dog in the first place, right? Your world's got smaller and smaller and smaller, and actually it doesn't need to be that way. You just need to reach out for help. Now, a couple of things to say on that. First of all, if you're insured, if your dog's insured with Pet Plan, Kennel Club, Agria, or many pets, we actually do direct claims with them, which means that that's covered by your insurance. So you don't pay out of your pocket, your insurance covers that. And the second thing to say is that we have loads of options if you're insured with another provider, or if your dog's not insured at all, that's also totally fine. We have loads of options that we've developed to make this so accessible for you. Um because we're aware that you've already invested a load of time and a load of money in getting your dog, looking after your dog, caring for your dog. But the last thing we want is for you to have done all that and still not be living the life that you deserve with your dog. And we know we can get you there. So all you need to do is go to the Behave Vet website, and the way to do that is go B-E-H A.V-E-T. That's behotvet, and it will take you there. Or just Google Behave Vet, right? Um, and you can get scheduled in and we can literally get you booked in for a consultation as soon as possible. We normally can accommodate it within a week, right? So that you can be getting to your dream ASAP. The third tip that I've got for you, and I think this is this is like a philosophical one, it's not a philosophical one, it's a it's like a concept that I think doesn't just apply to walks, it applies to all of your training, and we all get into habits of forgetting about this. If you have built and created a behavior, a game with your dog, a response from your dog, a um a cued trick or whatever, and you've put loads of really great reward experiences into that, into that behavior, into that choice. What you need to start to realize is that that behavior has bec should have become a reward in itself. Yeah? So that your dog doing that behavior is rewarding in itself. Okay, there has been value transfer from the reward experience you use to build it to that behavior, and now the behavior is a reward itself. And with that, then what you can start to do is you can start to use behaviors or cues or tricks or games or whatever to reward good choices. So now we're creating more of a chain of choices before we get to the food, right? So for example, I might recall my dogs and I might reward them with a left spin. Yeah? And that sounds mad, but it's not because that left spin is highly, a highly rewarding behavior for them, primarily because of that reward history that I've put into that behavior, but also because it's fun, it's snappy, it's quick, right? It's explosive, and you know, my dogs like to do like explosive movements. And so that in itself is a worthy reward. I then may or may not follow up with a food reward or a toy reward, or maybe then I'll dash away, right? You know, that's I think that's another one if I were to give a fourth tip. Maybe I will in a second. Um and so start to use realize that these behaviors not only are tools, but now they are little like um that they're rewards in their own right that you can use to reward other maybe behaviors and choices that you're still trying to build. Um and again, that makes it about working with you rather than for you. Yeah, because now you've got multiple reward experiences, and they're just like, God, whatever this human does, it's amazing. Now, on the subject of whatever this human does, it's amazing. That's probably the fourth tip that if I if I was allowed a bonus one, and that is that don't get obsessed with food and rewarding with food, and we all do it, yeah. Realize that there are your dog might find you clapping really rewarding, or they might find you dashing away really rewarding, or they might find jumping up on you really rewarding, and that might be appropriate for you and your dog. And these are rewards. Think of it as like it's hard to have a conversation with, it's hard to have a really meaningful and deep conversation and relationship with someone where they only know one word. Yeah. So if you think about your reward options as words or vocabulary, well, if you've got a whole language of reward that you can have with your dog, then that elevates your relationship and in turn elevates the environmental reliability that you two have when you're going through the world, right? And yeah, you can create new reward experiences, but I want what I want you guys to think about after you go away from this episode, actually, what have you already got? Because nearly always when I'm coaching dog owners, there's stuff that we're not utilizing enough and we're kind of clinging on to one particular reward. And the irony is that you know, we've got 150 of these questions. I don't think there are 150, but we've got a lot of these questions, tens of them, and you're saying that your dog is clinging on to the food, is overly reliant on the food and the presence of food. My question to you would be: are you overly reliant on the food and clinging to the food too? Yeah. And could we have multiple things that we could cling on to so that we can have more of a multi word conversation with our dogs rather than one single here's a piece of food situation, right? So, guys, I hope you got value. That was three plus one uh equals four, and I will see you next week.