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This is the one dog training solution that is helpful regardless of what sort of dog behavior problem you want to address.

If you want to change your dog's behavior or temperament, food is incredibly valuable. It's an important tool that will make training easier, more effective, and more enjoyable. But if you feed you dog from a food bowl, your dog won't be as interested in food.

Instead, feed your dog their food during training, or put their food into hollow chew toys so it reinforces your dog for settling down and chewing on an appropriate item. 

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Before dogs were domesticated, they would spend most of their day finding and obtaining food. When pet dogs are fed all of their food from a bowl, without any effort required, it leaves them with a lot of time and energy, and not much purpose. This often leads to undesirable behaviors.

Food is a very easy way to communicate with your dog and tell them what behaviors you like so they will do those behaviors more in the future. But if you feed your dog from a bowl, the only thing your dog learns to like is their bowl!

FEED FROM CHEW TOYS

If your dog is getting into trouble around the house, it's often because they are bored. They need a hobby and one of the best hobbies you can teach your dog is to settle down on their bed or in their crate with a nice chew toy filled with food.

As they chew on their toy, food falls out, and the dog is automatically rewarded for chewing on their toy. Now, whenever your dog is bored, they have a rewarding activity available.

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

If your dog is afraid or anxious, then food is the easiest way to rebuild their confidence and help them feel more comfortable about whatever it is that is scaring them.

Simply feed them their food when they are in the presence of whatever it is that makes them uncomfortable. When the scary thing is present, offer food and praise. When the scary thing goes away, ignore your dog. Over time, your dog will learn to associate the stimulus with food and praise and it will stop being scary.

Food isn't the only way to classically condition your dog, you can use anything that your dog likes. However, food is often the easiest tool to use, especially for inexperienced dog trainers.

 

LURE REWARD TRAINING

A lot of dog behavior problems can be solved by teaching your dog to perform a specific behavior on cue. Often, the easiest way to do this is with lure reward training. When you first start teaching a new skill, food is usually the easiest lure and reward you can use.

If your dog is interested in the food in your hand, you can lure your dog to do all sorts of things, and then you can give the food to your dog as a reward to reinforce the behaviors you like.

When it comes to Lure Reward training, food is really just the first step. Once your dog has learned a new skill, the next step is training your dog to perform this skill on cue, reliably and promptly, and in order to do this, you'll probably need to make use of other, more powerful rewards. Still, food is a critical tool that is almost always the easiest way to get started.

FOOD CRITICS

Some people don't like the idea of using food in training. Some people don't like the way it feels, or they want their dog to listen to them without the need for food.

It's a valid concern because a lot of dog trainers don't know how to move beyond food, and they train dogs that only listen when food is present.

Good dog trainers understand that food is just a step in the process and that you use food to communicate with your dog and teach them a new skill, but then you phase out the food and you teach your dog that following your instructions leads to all the things they love in life, with food being just one small part of that.

That's how you ultimately end up with a dog that does what you ask regardless of whether you are holding food or not.

RAW DIET & WET FOOD

If you feed your dog a raw diet or another wet food, you might think that it would be impossible to use your dog's food in training. Fortunately, you'd be wrong!

There are lots of ways you can continue feeding your dog the food you want, while also using food to improve your dog's behavior or temperament.

Most raw/wet diet can be stuffed into hollow chew toys, to help your dog to learn to enjoy settling down quietly. If you're worried about them making a mess, you can have them enjoy their food-filled chew toys in a crate. Just make sure you thoroughly wash the toys at the end of the day to remove food residue and prevent spoilage.

When it comes to hand-feeding your dog during active training, whether that's for lure-reward training or for classical conditioning, raw/wet food can be tricky to use.

One of the easiest solutions is to use a high-quality air-dried dog food, like Ziwi Peak, which is incredibly healthy, nutritious, and attractive to dogs. You don't need to replace your dog's diet entirely, you could just use Ziwi Peak for the hand-feeding part of their training, and put their raw/wet food into hollow chew toys.

If you're primarily using food for lure reward training, then you don't actually need to give a ton of treats because you'll be phasing them out over time. In that case you can also use high-value treats like freeze dried liver.

On the other hand, if you're using food for classical conditioning to address fear or anxiety, then you'll be giving hundreds of "treats", so it's important that the food you are using is healthy and well-balanced, like Ziwi Peak.

If there are components of your dog's diet that are easy to handle, for example, pieces of raw vegetable or cooked meat, you could set those aside to use in training.

If your dog's food is a puree, or if you can puree it yourself, you can put the food into a squeeze tube with a cap, and then, when you want to reward your dog, you squeeze a little food directly into your dog's mouth. They make these sorts of tubes for camping and for baby food.

Finally, you can kibble-ize any raw/wet food by first pureeing it, then extruding it onto a baking sheet in long thin snakes, then baking at a very low temperature until the outside dries up. Then break it into bite sized pieces you can use in training. 

But again, it might just be easier to buy a bag of Ziwi Peak, or another high-quality air-dried dog food, to use in training.

LEARN MORE

If you'd like to learn more about how to use your dog's food in training you should enroll in our free course; Six Simple Steps to Solve Your Dog's Behavior Problems.

Or, join the Top Dog Academy to get access to ALL of our online courses, plus our private support community, for just $20/month.

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