Katherine Ayres, PhD

It happens almost without fail.  I am in a private behavior consultation explaining the use of “high value rewards” for training a dog (which are almost always people food, not dog treats you buy at the store), and the owners look at each other then look back at me and say, “Oh we decided to never give Fido people food.”

Now why do owners say this?  Often, an owner’s main concern is that their dog will start begging for people food.  Most owners have a good enough understanding of positive reinforcement to know that if they feed their dog at the table, it inevitably leads to more intense and continuous begging when owners are eating at the table.

Concerns about begging are perfectly understandable.  We never tell owners to give their dogs high value treats at the dinner table or in any other context in which they do not want their dog to associate food. We recommend that owners save super high value treats (people food) for when the dog is in the presence of scary things, people or dogs. We can use lower value treats like the dog’s kibble for basic training where the distraction is low. Rule of thumb: the harder the thing is that you’re asking the dog to do, the higher the value of the treat. [Read more...]