By Helen Johnson-Breddy
You will notice in a lot of the guides, we suggest the use of food as a motivator & reinforcer for behaviour, or to pair with something to form a positive association. From the dog’s perspective, food is often something they like – it’s ingrained in them to seek out and is innately satisfying as it’s linked to their survival and biological need. All dogs need food to live, meaning all dogs will eat something! From a trainer/owner perspective, it’s a brilliant tool as we can achieve lots of repetitions and can easily vary the value of food (think: kibble vs tasty cooked sausage or treat in the mouth vs scattered in grass).
However, there are many cases where a dog will not be interested in food when training. The first thing to establish is that your dog is not overly anxious, fearful or aroused. Refusal of food is a good indicator that you are too close to a trigger, or your dog is trying to tell you they are uncomfortable in a particular situation.
If you are sure that they are comfortable, and are simply choosing to ignore the food on offer, we need to look at alternative motivators and reinforcers in the environment that are more valuable to your dog. We can then use that knowledge to our advantage in training. Think about the other stimuli in the environment and your surroundings that are most valuable to your dog:
- Squirrels running up trees
- Other dogs playing
- Scent of wild animals or other dogs
Now let’s look at ways we can replicate those stimuli to offer something to our dogs that is going to motivate and reinforce behaviour:
- Tug toys
- Chasing tennis balls
- Playing with other dogs
- Space to follow a scent trail
Remember, it is always the dog that chooses what is motivating and reinforcing. Just because you think chicken should trump playing with their friends, doesn’t mean they do! If you are trying to use food when something else in the environment is more valuable to them, you might be inadvertently pairing the food with not being allowed to access what they really want. This could then lead to them being less likely to listen to you. Oh dear! You have made food a punishing stimulus.
For example : We have our dog on a long line (management), training recall (behaviour), using food (reinforcer).
When food works: We use our recall cue, dog comes to us (behaviour), we feed a treat which they enjoy, dog is likely to perform that behaviour again (reinforcement). Hooray positive reinforcement at work.
When food doesn’t work: We use our recall cue, dog sees squirrel, dog ignores recall cue, we try to get food out (motivator) but squirrel is better than food, continues to ignore recall cue. Dog is likely to continue ignoring recall cue and food in future.
Not only have you reduced the value of your recall cue, but your dog might also start to feel upset/frustrated when they see you grabbing for the treats, as it means they’re not allowed to chase the squirrel.. Uh Oh! negative punishment at work.
Now, let’s look at how we can use an alternative reinforcer, or the environment itself! We use our recall cue, dog sees squirrel, we produce an exciting tug toy that looks like a squirrel with lots of noise and excitement (motivator), dog decides game with us sounds like fun, dog comes to us (behaviour), dog gets fun game (reinforcement). Yippee! Positive reinforcement back at work. This is also known as the Premack Principle where a more probable behaviour (Chasing squirrels/playing tug), reinforces the less probable behaviour (recall).
We can even extend this and then allow access to the environment to further reinforce the dog’s choice to come back to us. They learn that in order to get what they really want (squirrel chasing) they need to perform the behaviour we ask of them (recall).