15 Říj The treats vs. toys dilemma in obedience

The treats vs. toys dilemma in obedience

There are basically two main ways to reward your dog when training obedience. You either give him treats or you play with some kind of toy. That could be a ball, a tug or anything else from the millions of different dog toys you can buy these days. Whichever term I use in this article, please feel free to substitute that with your dogs’ favorite toy. 

Using these two, we are utilizing either the dog’s food drive or prey drive. Those are some of their strongest instincts – that’s why it works so well. Sometimes handlers oversimplify things. They claim their dog is either food or prey driven, and then they use that reward for everything they train. 

This is probably not the best idea as both treats and toys have their own advantages and disadvantages.  Let’s break down the best way to use both (and include some special procedures for those unusual dogs with different levels of either instinct.).

Treats first

Using treats is usually the best way to reward your dog when he is learning something new. In these cases, the ball might be over exciting for your dog, impairing his ability to learn. Many dogs with a developed prey drive are hardly able to do anything unfamiliar when their favorite ball is anywhere in sight. 

I always joke that my Archer has 90% of his brain occupied with the ball and 10% focused on the task at hand. He is a smart cookie, so he is able to use this 10% to do exercises he already knows very well. He would, however, have serious problems trying to learn new ones this way.

So the usual procedure with prey-driven dogs is to use treats to teach them a new exercise. It doesn’t matter if they are performing the exercise a bit slower than you would like them to. Or maybe they don’t put as much energy into it as you imagined. 

Don’t worry, just wait until they understand it and you can start using a ball as a reward. Instantly, 90% of their brain is all, “ball, ball, BALL!”, the energy goes through the roof, they get faster and the exercise finally looks just like you dreamed it would.

Testing with the ball

Knowing all this, it is also obvious that using a ball will instantly uncover any ambiguity your dog might have in this new exercise. Generally speaking, only very well understood exercises can be performed with the ball. Anything your dog isn’t so sure about, he won’t be able to do using just 10% of his brain.

So if you think your dog understands the new exercise, try doing it and rewarding him with a ball. If he still does it well, maybe even with increased speed and drive – congratulations on a job well done. If some mistakes arise that you didn’t struggle with while using food, I recommend going back to treats and working on it some more. 

So you start with treats, train, move on to the ball, if necessary go back to treats and then advance to the ball again and you are all done. Everything is just rainbows and pink unicorns with a 100 point obedience routine. Yeah right, I can hear you laughing. The real world is seldom so simple. 

Low prey drive dogs

There is a considerable number of dogs who don’t have any, or barely any, prey drive. It may be that their prey drive was very weak to begin with. Maybe their handler neglected to work on it when they were puppies. It might be a combination of both. 

The reason isn’t so important. The important thing is, you can’t reward a dog like this with a ball. Playing with a ball either doesn’t interest them at all, or they do it just because their handler seems to enjoy it. This means it isn’t a reward for them, more like another exercise. 

With dogs like this, you have essentially two options. 

1. Try to come up with an unusual reward which they will enjoy as I wrote in this article. Go read that. I’ll wait.

All done? Great, moving on to…

2. Use treats as a reward even after they have learned the exercise well. The downside of this can be low drive in high-speed exercises such as the retrieve. 

If you have a food-driven dog with no prey drive, I highly recommend using something really tasty for the retrieve and possibly other exercises you need a higher drive for. So you might be using kibble or some dried meat for training, that might be fine. But the moment your dog retrieves the dumbbell you bring out the big guns: fresh meat, some pork liver, you know, the yucky smelly stuff our fur pals love so much. This way it will be easier for your dog to muster up enough motivation for those high-drive exercises he might struggle with.

Low food drive dogs

On the other side of the spectrum, you have dogs with zero or almost zero food drive. You can’t interest them in even the best of treats. In some extreme cases, even when you try to skip one of their meals and use the food for training, they just aren’t interested. 

What to do in this case? Well, first of all know that it won’t be easy. I have had a handful of dogs like this in my training, and it requires much patience and ingenuity. You have to teach them everything using the ball, everything using just 10% of their brains. You can imagine that it isn’t easy. 

It is possible, but you have to be very patient and take it slow. Especially calm exercises like holding the dumbbell, for example, are very hard to do. Just remember, they aren’t being intentionally stupid. They are doing their best for you, as all dogs do. They are just using a minuscule part of their brain, figuratively speaking.

Low drive dogs

There are of course dogs that can’t be bothered by food nor by a toy. Those laid back, cool guys who just look you over like you are crazy when you want some activity from them. Those are really hard to work with because if you can’t motivate a dog, he has no reason to work with you.

I have covered these dogs in this article here, so you may want to read it if you think your dog might be in that category. And don’t worry, it could always be worse. You could have a…

Crazy high driven dogs

…crazy dog. By crazy, I mean highly food driven, highly prey driven, highly anything driven (coughArchercough). I know that for some people it might sound strange, but be sure it is very real. You can have a dog that is too highly driven for his own good. 

With dogs like these, it might be a good idea to never really transition to the ball phase. They are already so highly driven with food that introducing the ball can actually be detrimental to their performance. 

I have a number of exercises I train using only treats with Archer. For the longest time, it was heeling. Lately, it’s gotten better, and now I can reward with the ball (at least sometimes). Sit, down, stay – I always use treats. If I try to do it with the ball, he will try to do all three positions at once regardless of which command I said. It’s actually hilarious, but not really what I am aiming for.

I know many handlers who use only treats as a reward and they have beautiful, high drive obedience routines. So if you have a crazy dog like this, use the ball more like a nuclear weapon. And may the doggie god have mercy on your soul.

So now you know how to effectively use the two main rewards in your dog training. It’s not complicated, you just have to think it through, as always. 

Be mindful. You owe it to your dogs.