Thursday, May 5, 2011

Rewards

I want to note that when I trained with Katrin a very familiar refrain was, “Give your dog a cookie!” I would say people do it about 50% of the time – even with the verbal prompt! People get so hung up on running the course/finishing the course, when they should be breaking it into pieces and celebrating the small successes. The biggest change in my rewarding, that happened when I started training with Kathleen, is that I now rarely reward from my hand. I always throw treats away from my hand or toss Ike’s cheese container. This really gets Ike going. He loves food and being a terrier he loves chasing things. Combine the two, food and chasing, and you have a very happy Schnauzer!

5 comments:

Kathy Mocharnuk said...

The rewarding with chasing gives a great second reward....a treat and a chase game. breaking things down into smaller sequences so you can really concentrate on one challenge and are able to really reward challenges your dog conquers...that is real training.

Natasha said...

Definitely agree with you; Mika just LOVES chasing her food tube!!

manymuddypaws said...

haha, I am always yelling "feed the dog, feed the dog!"

:)

have you tried canned food in the treat container? Drives Boone nutty.

Sam said...

My teacher uses the same phrase and encounters the same problems with her students! I guess people just don't like ot break their momentum, which is usually disadvantageous for the dog..

Jules said...

I haven't tried canned food, but that is an AWESOME idea! I am sure Ike will agree with Boone. :)