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I've never understood people who say dogs are hard to train. They are SO motivated by food
by switch007 2y ago
I've never understood people who say dogs are hard to train. They are SO motivated by food
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoWhich is depressingly animalistic.
- vlovich123 2y agoHow so? Humans are very much the same way in many years, particularly as children.
- pxc 2y agoFood is a primary reinforcers for all species. Neither humans nor dogs are special in that respect. I don't see why anyone should find that depressing. Spend some time training dogs and you'll also find both that food motivation can vary quite a bit (some dogs are more interested in toys than food, for instance) and also that it's quite possible to train dogs without always relying on a food reward. Generally the deeper you go with understanding and training dog behavior, the more you realize how the same learning theory that informs scientific dog training also describes human behavior. (Imo it also reveals deficiencies in thinking in terms of learning theory/behaviorism alone; idk how you could work closely with animals and seriously believe they lack cognition.)
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- asimovfan 2y agoWe are also the same. We are out for food, the rest is just talk..
- swatcoder 2y agoWhat do you mean by that? Of course sharing food is a way to build social bonding and positively motivate social conformance. It is with people too, which is why it's so natural for us to carry it over to our relationship with dogs. How or why is that depressing? It's good that we crave what helps us thrive and that we can recognize who makes it easy for us to have more, and there's a beautiful elegance to that fact that so many creatures share the trait, across such diverse lineages as birds, reptiles, fish, arthropods, mammals, etc Isn't that inspiring, rather than depressing?
- qwertox 2y agoI ride a lot of bike. I love it when dog owners see someone approaching on a bike, tell their dog to sit and give him a treat. These dogs will then stop when they notice a bike approaching while the owner is distracted. I am always so grateful that I say thank you to the owners. Then there are those who just don't care to train their dogs.
- lostlogin 2y ago> Then there are those who just don't care to train their dogs. There is a worse option. The thin extending dog lead at maximum extension while walking the dog in twilight on a cycle path. What could go wrong?
- JansjoFromIkea 2y agoI tripped over one of these in central London where it abruptly started raining heavily and the owner ran off in one direction while the dog went in another. Got some doubts about the value of those leads in general; surely it just means the dog has no gauge at all in how far they can go in any direction?
- jvm___ 2y agoI assumed someone was doing this to me on a sunset run along a paved path. Human standing on one side of the path, small dog in the grass on the side, so I cut my running closer to the dog. It wasn't a dog, it was a skunk. Fortunately it didn't seem threatened and just waddled away.
- jumploops 2y agoNot all dogs are motivated by food. Our high energy, water-loving, labradoodle is only motivated by one thing: frisbee.
- switch007 2y agoIME all are... Labradoodles are loopy, like most of the bred-for-instagram breeds. Got to expect the abnormal
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- drewmol 2y agoSome generations of labradoodles are hypoallergenic from my understanding.
- radnor 2y agoThere are no hypoallergenic dogs. There are degrees to which dogs shed, but it's not specific to any one breed and can vary wildly. https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/hypoallergenic-dogs/ https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/hypoallergenic-dogs/
- switch007 2y agoThat's just false reasoning for buying an Instagram fad dog, save admitting they are buying a fashion accesory (Yes I'm annoyed by those who buy a dog to be an accessory and don't bother training them. There are loads of them where I live and they are annoying at best and menaces at worst)
- llamaimperative 2y agoPretty much every dog trainer in the world will tell you different dogs are motivated to different degrees by different things. Very weird point to argue on. I have two purebred poodles (not bred for Instagram) and one is highly motivated by food, the other will decline treats pretty often, even treats we know he really loves. This is not super atypical of poodles. And to put another layer of complication on your dismissal of other people's challenges training dogs: the not food-motivated one is way easier to train.
- pseudostem 2y agoNeither did I, until I got this lovely idiot who's probably bipolar and probably on the spectrum. They're motivated by food, yes; and we're motivated by unconditional love.
- mikestew 2y agoMost dogs are, yes. I train dogs at an animal shelter, and I can tell you that not all dogs are motivated by food. Some will just turn their nose up at even the tastiest of treats. Some of those dogs might rather have a pet on the head or some praise. A rare few don’t seem motivated by much of anything. But for the 80% case, yeah, grab some string cheese and a clicker.[0] [0] https://www.rover.com/blog/clicker-training-dogs/ https://www.rover.com/blog/clicker-training-dogs/
- switch007 2y agoPerhaps overfed? Have owned dogs all my life, also trained 4 rescues, and various friends' dogs and never yet met one who can resist chicken. Relativity small sample size of about 20 dogs I admit
- llamaimperative 2y agoPerhaps all yours were underfed?
- elawler24 2y agoMy dog is far more motivated by human attention than food. There’s only one food that he’ll do anything for - freeze dried chicken hearts.
- SkyPuncher 2y agoDepends on the dog. I’ve trained two puppies this year. The first one was stupid easy to train. Food motivated and could be refocused in every situation with food. Picked up commands quickly. Would do training basically any time of day. Second dog just stares at me if she doesn’t want to be trained or feels the task is too hard. When she gets distracted, it doesn’t matter how high of a reward I give, she won’t take it if she doesn’t want it.
- dmix 2y agoYes the idea that all dogs are equal and it’s just a mattering of training is a very harmful idea. People get soft about it though because they hit some cute/fuzzy dopamine thing in their brain and don’t take that reality seriously.
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- glimshe 2y agoThis is essentially the nature vs nurture debate, but for dogs.
- pxc 2y agoOne trick that is popular in my family is to rest a treat on the tip of a dog's nose, tell them to wait, count silently for a few seconds, and then give them permission to eat it. (My sister's dog does it every day after his breakfast, and I recently had the pleasure of asking him to perform this trick for me when they visited. :) Anyhow, my favorite of the dogs from my childhood was generally uninterested in what certain people wanted from her. She was more motivated by praise and the sheer joy of teamwork with her favorite people than by food. So one day my mom (not one of this dog's favorites, through no fault of her own) sets her up to do the trick: she asks the dog to sit and places a treat on the dog's nose. The dog slowly decides she'd actually rather do something else. She tilts her head down towards the ground, the treat slides off her nose, and she leisurely walks away.
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- pennomi 2y agoHeck, I’ve got a food-motivated cat and I’ve trained her to do all kinds of tricks.
- dr_kretyn 2y agoYou have limited experience. Mine couldn't care less about food if a ball was near it. We also missed her feeding a few times and she never begged or reminded about the food. I usually carry a bag of treats (her favourite) but sometimes she refuses to eat them.
- sva_ 2y agoWolves naturally don't usually eat everyday either, we just make dogs do it because we do it.
- rkagerer 2y agoMy dog must have missed the memo. He'll come over at EXACTLY 6 o'clock (to the minute) to remind you about dinner if it hasn't yet been served. He used to do the same in the morning but eventually we reached a truce on the concept of sleeping in from time to time.
- OtomotO 2y agoThat's why you never feed them at an exact time. We have a time frame of roughly 3 hours in which we feed the dog. That way we can have a nice dinner too, go to a musical etc. pp. A friend of ours made the same mistake as you. His dog becomes a real diva after 6pm, if she hasn't eaten
- RoyalHenOil 2y agoI tried doing that with my dogs, but it led to them being annoyingly clingy as their general dinner time approached because they knew they could be fed suddenly at any time. So I switched to using a phone alarm that marks when it's time to feed the dogs. I can easily change the time it rings to adjust their meal times, and they remain patient because they know that they won't be fed until they hear that sound.
- sva_ 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning
- suprjami 2y agoI have a dog who is so food-motivated that he gets distracted by the chance of a treat and won't learn anything.
- nozzlegear 2y agoHa, I was going to say the same thing! We have a Black Lab with the same problem, he's so motivated by food that he gets tunnel vision and can't focus on anything but the treat in our hands. Training him was tough.
- powersnail 2y agoBeing motivated to learn isn't equal to being effective at learning. Not all dogs are prone to "understand" what the training is about. Sometimes, they seem like they are eager and ready to engage with your training, but then at the end of the day, not really having learned anything.
- NicoJuicy 2y agoFood, but play is better... In many cases it's the owners fault, not being able to train well
- Propelloni 2y agoI agree, most dogs are not hard to train, but also not all of them are motivated by food. We accidentally got a Kuvasz (probably a mix, with 50cm at the shoulder she is a little short for a pure breed) puppy eight years ago. That's a LGD from Hungary. By "accidentally" I mean nobody in the shelter knew what kind this white fuzzball was, but she liked us, we liked her, so we took her home. It was quite the surprise when we found out what we got there. Anyhow, like many of her kind she is NOT into food. That made training her in the beginning very difficult, because we knew no other way back than. Even today, I always have to chuckle when I try to give her a treat and she takes the treat very gently from my hand and puts it down on the floor, like saying "let me put it there for you." Of course, sometimes she just eats it but you never know.
- megatron2009 2y agoWe had a Samoyed who was completely uninterested in food. We tried everything including treats, meat, peanut butter, what not. It would not even touch that food and only eat when he was hungry. He did love combing his hair a lot, walkies and frisbee. So, in the first couple of months, we actually used combing his hair and frisbee as a prize, despite our reservations because his hair would develop knots. But he learned extremely quickly and then we could let it go.
- dkga 2y agoDogs actually don’t need food for training. It’s an effective, but “lazy” way to train dogs. The best practice is behavioral, to show you are the leader in the dog’s pack. Then you won’t need to ever give a treat for good behaviour. And even in my case where I do give a treat some times, my dog completely obeys me “organically”. PS.: I’m a veterinarian.
- radlad 2y agoThere's certainly a degree of luck regarding a dog's demeanor though. I have a BC / Beagle mix and started training her with treats: she's highly food motivated! Eventually I realized she also loves to please - and reason things out herself - and the food was completely unnecessary! No specific "dominance" training necessary.
- dkga 2y agoThat is actually my point: if your dog likes to please you, it’s because in part it sees you as a leader. It’s not so much (always) about specific training (and definitely nothing resembling being an “alpha” in modern parlance).