How to Handle Food for Safety and Success

Dog biting at your hand when you hold out a treat? Dog gettling less exited by food as time goes on, and not more? Dog overexcited by food and looses their mind as soon as they know you have it? Training with food is fantastic, but not without its challenges. The good news is most are easy fixes that you can do right now and start to seem some improvement

Fixing Over Excited Finger Biters

How to Hold the Treat: tucked between the thumb and side of the hand. Hand is flat.

A common concern people voice when talking about treats is "but my dog bites my hand when I have a treat." There are actually ways to hold and offere your treat that will prevent or at least minimize teeth-skin contact when rewarding the dog. Here you can see the way we recommend you hold your treat: the hand is flat, with the fingers together. Tucked between the thumb and the side of your hand is the treat. This forces the dog to come at your hand more gently naturally, and makes them work a little for the reward. It also offers them a flat surface, so there is less to accidnetally bite, unlike when the treat is held in your finger tips.

Food Reward Form: Flat hand, fingers down, treat tucked between two fingers, on the dog's level, moving away

When you offere your reward, hold it as seen above, and offer it as seen to the side here. Fingers pointed straight down, with your hand held on your dog's level. As you can see here, there is a straight line from my hand, to the dog's shoulders. Her head and neck are in line which makes the treat easy to access. She pushes into my hand to get the treat, because I am moving it slightly away from her. This makes her want the treat more, and also prevents me accidentally moving my hand into her mouth. This is the best way to prevent an accidentaly skin-teeth contact when rewarding. When offereing treats in fingertips it is difficult for dogs to tell the difference between the two, and frankly, most don't care. This eliminates the need to worry about your dog biting you when you I've dealt with dogs who would litterally draw blood when offered a treat the usual way, but like this they had no issue.

It does take some practice to get a handle on getting a treat out, and then getting it into position, so feel free to practice without the dog around until you get the hang of it. In the meantime, when you are training, just drop the treat on the ground after you mark. It isn't ideal, and isn't something I reccomend for a permanent solution, since ideally the mark will make the dog focus on us, but it is a great short term stopgap until you've got the hang of it. It will also take your dog some practice to learn the new spot the treat is coming from. The first few times you offer the treat toward the top of your hand,your dog will still look to your fingertips for a reward. However, they likely won't actually bite because they'll be able to tell the treat isn't there. Be prepared to be patient while they figure out where the new reward spot on your hand is. Once the two of you get your parts worked out though, this will become second nature for both of you. For me, when I reach for a reward, I no longer even have to think about it; by the time my hand is at my dog's level, the reward is in the right spot.

Increasing Motivation for Lackluster Food Takers

When training with treats there are ways we can handle the food that will improve our dog's desire to work with us, and (potentially more importantly) there are ways we can handle food that will make our dogs less likely to work with us. If you are struggling to get motivation in your training, even with food, look at how you're handling to food and see if you are inadvertently killing your dog's motivation.

The first thing to consider is if your dog even likes the reward you are offering. Remember your dog gets to decide what is rewarding, not you. You can't reward them with something they don't think is rewarding, then it isn't a reward. And while it may seem simple, what dog doesn't like treats right?, dogs will show their prefrences in all kinds of ways. I have a dog who won't eat raw shrimp but loves most veggies. I know a dog who will steal salad off the counter if left unattened, but won't eat any kibble that isn't his usual kind. I know a dog who refuses all new food and treats the first time they offered, but will take anything the second time. Don't assume that just because its something dogs typically like, that your dog likes it.

So the first step to curing a less than motivated dog would be to be sure they actually like the food you are offering. Let your dog try any treats before the training session, and see what they naturally prefer. Anytime you get a new kind of treat, let the dog try them before using them in a raining session. If there's somehting your dog turns their nose up in a no pressure environment, like a free reward just because, don't try and use that in a training session.

Increase Motivation for Your Food Reward:

1. Give it After a Yes Marker Chances are if you've made it here, you are familiar with marker training, and know that we use markers with our rewards. If that's a new idea for you, please check out our posts on what marker training is, and how to get started using it. We use marks with our rewards for the simple reason that it adds clarity to the dog. They understand that they are getting the reward for the behavior they were doing when they heard the mark. Without using a mark, the dog is not always sure why they get the reward. For example, if the dog sits and then you reach for the bag of treats with no mark, the dog is probably going to stand up, and my start jumping or barking, or other excitable behaviors. So when they actually get the treat, they think it could be for anyone of those things. We mark so the dog knows exactly what they were getting rewarded for, so they understand the exact behaviors we want them to repeat.

2. Keep Food Out of Sight If your dog can see the treats they are about to get, they tend to stop listening. They will just run through the behaviors that they have had success with before and try and get the treat that way. There is no learning or training going on, the dog is just guessing until they guess right. Instead, keep food in a pocket, bait bag, on a nearby surface, or really anywhere but in your hand for the dog to see. Of course, if you are luring, your treat will be in your hand. But it should be tucked up in your fingers like discussed above, not held out in your finger tips. Once you've offered a few rewards in a training session, a dog who knows a hand touch and how to lure will probably follow an empty hand as if there was a treat in it, so if your dog will follow your hand without a lure, try and do that as much as possible.

3. Use a Variety of Rewards If you got your favorite little appetizer every time you did anything good at your job, how long would it take for you to want literally anything else? Probably not long right? Well, our dogs are the same way; if you only use one kind of treat in a training session, or for all training, your dog will quickly tire of that, no matter how good it is. I've seen dogs tire of hot dogs, boiled chicken, and beef liver. It does not matter how good it is, if it's the only thing on the table, it becomes worthless pretty quickly. So in your training, mix up the rewards! I like to use about 80% low value rewards (usually my dog's kibble), 15% medium value reward (regular treat), and 5% high value reward (something really good). This not only keeps the dog from getting bored of the good stuff, it makes the low value rewards more exciting. They know they have a chance of a medium or high value reward everytime you mark, so they will go for the reward with gusto. Even if it ends up being low value, they'll be happy with it.

4. Move the Food Away From the Dog When you do mark and reward your dog, don't shove the food in their face. In fact, don't move it toward them at all. Instead, hold your hand down at your side, or on their level and move the food away from them. It doesn't have to be fast, in fact it shouldn't be, but just enough to make your dog think that their "prey" might escape them. This will add fun to the training for your dog. If you push the treat toward them however, they will be put off. Think how you felt as a kid when the adults in your life would try and make you try something new. It didn't matter if you wanted it to begin with, if they shoved it in your face, you were going to move away and not want anything to do with it anymore. The same thing goes for our dogs; if we push something in their face, they're going to want to back away and not take it. If we move it away from them though, they are going to want to chase after it, and take it.

5. Don't Reach for the Food to Early Be sure you do not reach for the food until you have completed your marker. Don't do it as you say it, don't do it before you say it. Your dog will pay more attention to your body language than to your spoken words, so if you move too early, your dog will not be paying attention to the mark, they will just be waiting for you to reach for a reward. I like to count to one in my head after I mark before I move at all. It is human nature to try and make ourselves more efficient, and once you are comfortable with the mark reward sequence, you may start to move too early without realizing it. That's why I build in that mini separator (counting to one) so I don't accidentally start moving too early. It doesn't have to be count to one, of course, but I do reccomend you stick a microscopic, mental, middle step in to your mark reward sequence. It will save you having to constantly police yourself for early movement.

Give these things a try, and see if any of them help to build more motivation in your training. We hope you have success and wish you and your dog happy training!