Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Dog Training Tips – Should You Use Dog Treats?

January 28, 2012 by Miguel Greene  
Filed under Puppy Training Tips


When you are training a dog, there’s always been some controversy over whether you should give treats such as MilkBones, dog biscuits, and so on. Giving treats to a dog when you are training him does have a couple of advantages as well as disadvantages. Any confusion that you might have would hopefully be cleared up with this article.

Now, “Of course! Give the dog treats so he’ll obey you. After all, you won’t get his attention if you don’t give him anything he enjoys” is what some people would say. On the other hand, some other people will say, “No, don’t give the dog treats! He’ll be only obeying you for the food.”

Here’s the truth: both opinions stated above are correct. What the dog needs is some incentive to obey you, right? But also, what if they dog does begin to work only for the food? Now what? He doesn’t really have any reason to obey you if he is not hungry and does not really want the food.

The question is: should you use dog treats? Yes, you should, but do so in moderation. Rather than give the dog a treat every time he obeys you, it would be better if you just praise him excessively. Also, to avoid overfeeding him, try not to make the prize too big. One example is breaking a biscuit in half or even cutting it into three pieces so that you are not feeding your dog too much when you train him.

There’s another way you can train young puppies. Avoid feeding them biscuits at all and instead, use adult dog food pellets. The pellets are big enough to be a treat for the young puppy’s tiny mouth, but small enough that it won’t overfeed the puppy.

You shouldn’t train your dog to obey you only for the food as a reward and this is another important tip you need to remember. You may not be consciously doing this but it is easy to slip into the habit of just rewarding your dog with a treat every single time he does anything remotely good.

Instead, you want your dog to think of you as the “strong master,” or the “alpha” over him, so that he obeys you because you’re the master and because he wants to please you, not just because you have a treat. When he does something good, what you can do is praise him in a high voice when he does something good and in a deep, “you’re in trouble” voice when he does something bad. You want him to distinguish between the voices and figure out that a high voice means “good” and low means “bad” and whenever you do the low voice, you are not pleased with him.

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