Tips to use food as a reward to efficiently train your dog part 1

Tips to Use Food as a Reward to Efficiently Train your Dog Part 1

Dogs are one among the most loyal companions known to humans. Dogs, almost all the breeds easily socialize with humans, are known to enjoy human interactions, especially their master’s. However, on most of the occasions, you need to train your dog a tad to help him blend in perfectly with your household. Training a dog can be a hectic task, especially, when you don’t have any experience on the same. A trick of trade for efficient and quick training of you dog is to use food as reward.

Position/posture training

Dog trainers use food as a lure to convince the dogs to pose themselves in different positions or postures. The key here is the way you present the food and how you make it look compelling. For instance, it is always ideal to hold the treat between your thumb and finger and position it near to your pooch’s nose. As soon as the dog identifies the smell of the treat, you have his attention. You can enclose the treat in your palm and lure the dog into different positions or posture and reward him at the moment he maintains the posture that you want him to, after saying ‘Yes’. Repeat the procedure for desired results.

Feed him in fractions and not in bulk

Treat your dog in fractions rather than in bulk. If you feed him in larger portions, he can easily loose his appetite and loose interest in the training session all of a sudden.  The trick is to keep him on his toes throughout the training session by giving him tiny portions of a mixture of his favorite treat. I personally use a combination of meatballs and cheese to keep my loved one engaged throughout the training session.

Heed to treat delivery position 

The position of delivering the treat is really important. For instance, if you are training your dog to lie down, it is critical that you reward him only when he is lying down and not while he is on the way to accomplishing the task. If you are training your dog to walk without a leash, hold the treat by your side where you expect him to walk. If your dog seems to be walking ahead or behind, hold out the treat and let him know what is expected from him.

Don’t get carried away

As a dog owner who is engaged in aggressive dog training, you can easily get carried away when you see your loved one being so obedient and give away all the treats at hand, in minutes. Such behavior from your part can easily encourage your dog to be lazy, which he will start mirroring with below-average responses. Therefore, it is important that you reward your dog only for picture-perfect and quick responses.

Training your dog with treats is always the ideal means to form a stronger bond with him in addition to instilling some manners in him. Always, understand the difference between bribing and rewarding him with treats. Dog bribing is literally giving him treat to perform something he already knows, which is something that you do not want to encourage at any cost.