You have already learned about some of the important tips to train your dog by using food as reward. This blog post is written as a continuation of the first one, with some additional tips to using food as bait to train your dog.

Look for signs of anxiousness

Dogs that have anxiety issues or under socialized tend to act stressful even if you try to train them by giving food as reward.  Symptoms like consistent leap lunging, tucked-in tail, lack of interest towards treat and other signs of distress during training indicate that your dog is either anxious or under-socialized. Trying to train such dogs in public places like the park or even your friend’s background will turn out to be less effective. It is important to ensure that your dog is devoid of any anxiety or stress factors prior to commencing the training session.

Preventing accidental bribery

Even though pet parents are stubborn about not bribing their dog, they end up accidently bribing their loved pooch. More often, people are forced to bribe their dogs to convince them to obey the orders. However, this can make matters worse. Understand that a dog which is bribed constantly lacks attention towards his master. Therefore, to rule out the concept of bribery from the root, you need something to let your dog know that his attention is wanted. Calling your dog’s name each time you want him to obey is something that can be really helpful in accomplishing this.

When you train your dog with a treat as a reward, prior to making him obey the order, call his name, when you are sure that you have his attention, take out the treat and get it off his nose to get a deeper attention. Stick to this strategy throughout the training session and you can have your dog’s attention by calling his name, even when he seems to be losing interest in the training session.

Make it more compelling with additional treat types

It is not ideal to get your dog addicted to training by food. To alleviate such a concern and to instill the right thought in him, you need to mix up food training sessions with ‘life rewards’. Life rewards is literally training your dog by rewarding him with stuff other than food. For instance, pet parents also reward their pet by taking him for a walk, playing fetch with him etc. Mixing food training with life rewards is an ideal means to make your dog understand that agreeing with your requests is the key to unlocking all the positives.

Ensure that he is hungry

The intensity of your dog’s hunger is the key to training him. Ensure that you do not train him as soon as he is fed and do not feed him a mouthful on the day you intend to train him. For instance, if you intend to train your dog in the evening, you may skip his afternoon meal or feed him really lightly during that period. If you wish, you can always give him a better meal after the training session.

It is important to use healthy treats as baits or rewards while training your dogs. An ideal means to get healthy treats for your dog is to prepare it at home. Do not prepare treats that can easily make your dog overweight, unless and until you exercise him regularly.