Dog Advice Topic: How to Wean Off Food Rewards

Bella,
I started doing some training at home using treats but now my dog won't respond unless I have a treat on me. How do I get her to do things without food??
-Food Fanatic in Forest Park

FFiFP,
How you should reward your dog depends on how long they have been learning a new command. A new command can be a word or hand signal they have never seen before or command that they haven't learned in a certain context. For example, a new command can be "Down" if you have a puppy that has never heard that word before. Or it can be "Sit" if you have only taught it inside your home and now you are teaching your dog to sit outside on the sidewalk. Or it can even be "Sit" if you have always been standing when you give the command and now you are sitting on a chair. Dogs don't generalize very well so it takes teaching a dog a command in many different settings to get them to fully understand or "know" the command.
Back to how to reward a dog - when a dog is learning a new command they should be rewarded EVERY time they respond correctly. So when teaching "Sit", each time you say "Sit" and your dog puts his bottom on the ground you should reward that.

When is a command not a new command? Research has shown that it usually takes at least one hundred times of responding and being rewarded for a dog to really understand that command. After your dog really understands a command you should go on to what is called a random reinforcement schedule. What this means is that the dog can't predict when a reward is going to come. You should start rewarding relatively often so, for example, after your dog understands a command you will reward on average every nine out of ten correct responses.
Again, it needs to be completely random. Dogs have been shown to figure out very complex schedules so if you don't give a treat every tenth response you will notice that they are either a little slower on that tenth response or they don't respond at all! As you are successful you will slowly start making the rewards more sporatic. So you start out nine out of ten times giving a reward. Then you slowly work down to four out of five, then to two out of five and so on until you rarely have to give a reward at all.

You can also start decreasing the value of the reward. Maybe you started out using lunch meat, then you slowly give more of their plain dog food with lunch meat every few rewards, then you just praise the dog with dog food only every few rewards. Soon your dog will be working for just a "Good dog" and a belly scratch. The reason this works is your dog is always hoping that the next time they respond correctly they will get the good stuff. So they think "Maybe if I just sit again I will get a treat."

Another thing you can do after they know the command is start to reward only very good behavior. So if you ask your dog to Sit and they sniff around and then slowly put their bottom on the ground, they only get a pat on the head and a "Good Dog." But the times that you ask your dog to Sit and they quickly snap to a sit they get a huge reward - tons of little treats, a bunch of tennis balls come flying out of nowhere or you play a big game of chase with them. This will teach your dog if respond quickly and they will get the better stuff.
Think of it as if you got an instant bonus in your bank account immediately when you did something outstanding at work. That would be quite the insentive to keep doing better at your job, wouldn't it?

And that's the bark on the street!
Bark up!
Bella

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