What Rewards Should You Be Using With Your Dog During Training?

First of all, we need to talk about this statement:

"What we think is reinforcing, may not be rewarding for our dogs"

We have to find what our dog finds the most reinforcing in order for our training to thrive!

Each dog is different, but there may also be multiple things we can use!

Have a look at the graphic below to see a few options we use throughout our training:

Examples of Reinforcement

Let's relate this to my own dogs for a real life example:

Fudge was all about food! There wasn't anything I couldn't encourage her to try if it involved food. Of course, using food does have it's own considerations (more on this is another post...) but as long as I had a pocket of treats with me, I was sure to be okay. She also would respond extremely well to verbal praise during training. However, Fudge had almost zero interest in toys and play. If I had tried to train her using toys as a reinforcer I'd have gotten nowhere!

Whereas, Lupo has quite a different story. When he first came to us, although he loved his food, this had no value to him outdoors or through training. He also seemed unsure of toys, and wasn't yet bonded with us for verbal praise or pets to be a reward for him. For a short while, his 'reward' during walks was to be able to sniff and walk where he wanted to!

Now, Lupo LOVES toys and playing! His favourite is a game of tug, and this is something I utilise for recall training specifically. I have also found treats that he loves, and I can now use food with my training too (again, I'll talk about this in another post!). So, Lupo does have options

It may take some time and trial and error approach to really dig down and find what is rewarding for your dog

Many people will say "my dog isn't food motivated", but that does not mean you have nothing to reward your dog with, and that your training will suffer!

Sometimes, you just have to think outside of the box

Happy training!

Emma, Elmtree Dogs (BSc, MSc Animal Behaviour & Training, UK Sniffer Dogs Instructor)