Training rewards/motivators

What is the best reward for your dog when you're training?

Gavroche's is food, definitely. But he responds well to praise, too. Toys work on very rare occasions. Earlier today he learned how to open the fridge, and the best motivation was "OMG I'M MAGIC!" He gets a kick out of opening the oven, too.

Logan is VERY food motivated, though not as food-crazy as he used to be. Toys don't work much. Praise does work a little.

One of the collies I'm training works best for straight up praise. Toys are a lost cause, and food is just "meh." But praise, he gets all happy and excited and is just SO HAPPY

The other collie I'm training is definitely food motivated, mildly toy motivated, and barely praise motivated.




I just think it's fascinating how each dog responds differently to different types of rewards

I thought it was hilarious that Hawaiian pizza was on the poll - that's my dog's MAJOR vice.

Summer is food. She will also work for just praise. We can do a full training session with just the rewards being a pat on the head and 'good dog' but food ups her focus quite a bit. She is a very easy dog.

Mia's best is a combination of food and tennis ball. Tennis ball can get her over excited sometimes still but when you can get it to work, it really really works well. Praise for her doesn't have the same kind of value it does to Summer. She's like 'okay, I'm a good dog now where is my food/ball?' lol.

FOOD! Although I'm sure hawainn pizza would certainly work also!

lol

Praise works quite a bit too.. but I don't tend to do the kind of praise that works in public because it involves baby voice and a dance lol

Missy's is definitely food. Jack will work equally as well for food and toys.

Pip and Squash are food, for sure.

Maisy will work for practically anything positive -- food, praise, toys/tug. I think she learns something NEW best with food, but once she's got something down it's anything goes.

I use food for Tucker, which works well always. He loves his food, especially if you vary up the treats, he does get bored of the same thing over and over, he'll still work for it but not with as much focus.

However he also considers tug very reinforcing in most circumstances. However if he is nervous or distracted he will not play tug, but will still take food.
I wouldn't use tug to train him commands since I don't like having to stop to play tug after each time he does the behavior. I'll use it after he already knows the behavior and he complies when I ask. I'm also using it to teach him to "track" the pheasant scent I bought. Right now I treat him and then play tug. I'm hoping the tug will keep him from giving up as it keep him in a brighter, more spazzy, mood.

He does enjoy being petted, so I'll use it if he complies to something after he already knows the command and we're in the house. But I certainly don't expect him to go out of his way if he thinks all he could get is a pat and "good dog".



For Phoebe I can use food or life rewards like going outside or being let up on the couch. But she'd honestly jump into a pit of lava for a tidbit of turkey.
She considers play to be draining work and touch to be revolting (during training anyways).

Food... She does enjoy when i share my pizza with her too.

Toys she's catching on to and i wouldn't worry about it if it wasn't easier to train weaves using a toy instead of treats.

Praise? Meh... She gets so much attention from me and half the population of my city it's just become background noise lol.

With Quinn I mainly use food, but she's also worked really well for me for a ball throw.

With Dally I use treats to teach a behaviour, and usually just use praise if we're showing her tricks to someone or something. If she knows there's food involved the wheels in her brain get turning a little too fast.

Food for Buster.
Toys slightly more than food for Quinn but both are very valuable to her.

A combination of food and praise works wonders on Meg. Food needs to be high value though - we regularly do a McDonalds run before big training sessions if I don't have really good leftovers for her.

We've also had to get creative in the past with her. Our old training field was surrounded by ground hog holes, and in the evenings during class, the groundhogs would come out and sit outside the fence. A certain brindle someone would obsess over them - if she even touched equipment, it was to get on a piece of contact equipment and stand there for a better view. We would actually reward her by letting her run the fence line in peace. Get her to do one piece of equipment and release with "go get 'em!". Get her to do two..etc. I thought my trainer was a lunatic the first time she said to try that. By george, it worked like a dream, and within a couple of reps, she was running full sequences with that as her reward.

Their favorite reward isn't necessarily what they work best for.

Ares' favorite reward is a chance to run cattle. But since we don't have access to that, he will happily work for treats. Any treats. He doesn't care about verbal praise very much, but he does notice and enjoy when I'm truly pleased with him - not just a "good boy", but when my face lights up and I'm sure there are body language changes with it - he will work to recreate that. He has virtually no interest in toys.

Morgan's favorite reward is either treats or a chance to run and zoom and roll, preferably in something stinky and slimy.

Tyr's favorite reward is me. Praise, petting, or just a chance to be near me. But it's also mildly distracting in some situations - if I'm doing distance work, for example, and I praise him, he'll break and come over to me. He will eagerly accept food rewards and a chance to sniff/pee is also highly motivating for him. Toys work well in most cases, but every once in a while the environment will be more interesting to him than a toy.

Nyx's favorite reward is a chance to be left alone and zoom/chew on a toy. Since leaving her alone is kind of counterproductive to training, we tend to not use it often. Toys are a huge motivator for her, but they overstimulate her to the point where she can't focus on training. So we use food for best results.

Traveler will work for his Tug/Ball/Random Stick really hard and enthusiastically and food he'll do the same though with a little less zing, but I think that's because we are both worked up more with the toy training.

He'll also work for "praise" in a way. I mean, he would work for that but I always amp it up and jump around yaying while telling him to jump with me and he thinks that's the funniest thing ever. He'll work pretty hard to get me to look like an idiot.

Kaylee is food. No doubt. But, she does consider me letting her poke me and go between my legs from behind highly rewarding too so I use that a lot at the end of a longer string of commands

I voted other, and not cause I have 7 dogs lol...

But it depends on the activity we are doing. Working for DD for example its all about the stick/toy. When training obedience I use food. When training agility I use both toys and foods. With Kaiden I also use life rewards, I let him pee on a post lol.

Food and life rewards mostly, toys for some things, occassionally. In agility, toys were useful to ramp Lyric up and to get him to hurry, so food and toys there. Chulita couldn't care less about toys. She does play with them a little on her own, but for training, not usually high on the hierarchy of rewards. It depends on which dog and what we're doing too. Hawaiian pizza would be very appreciated by them. Praise is fine, but marginal. It's probably been associated with food so much that it's become a conditioned reinforcer, not a primary.

Keegan likes treats and I mostly use them, but he's not "OMG IT'S FOOD!" like labs and such are. He also works really well for praise/petting/attention. I know it's not really true that dogs work for you just to make you happy, but Keegan appears to do that because attention and praise are good reinforcers for him.

Luna's all about the treats. She'll do anything for anybody if they have a treat. She also works well for life rewards; this was really handy in agility, the reward for doing a difficult obsticle would be going to get to do a fun obsticle.

But IMO this is a difficult concept for some dogs to learn, and takes a while for the handler to really figure out how to use it too (which obsticles are "fun"? when/how do I cue her to do a fun obsticle and when do I just end the run? etc.). So it'll be a while before life rewards are really very useful for Keegan.

Chloe LOVES food. Particularly "forbidden" food, like table scraps or cat food. But smelly dog treats work just as well. She'll work for a toy if she wants to play, but otherwise not. Praise is a good marker for her, but she definitely doesn't work only for praise. She has the Mia mentality: Rose isn't motivated by anything. LOL But when she decides she does want to do something, food is normally the reason why. She wanted a bite of my sandwich the other day, so she walked over to me, "ARoooooo!"'d, sat, offered to shake, waved, laid down, and then sat back up. She was like, "Come on, woman, I'm DOING EVERYTHING, give me the **** sandwich!"

I'll go with food. She'll do just about anything for a tidbit of something. She works really well for tug toys too and in some instances that's better--if I have a tug toy at the dog park she is obsessed with me, but doesn't care so much if I have food. However sometimes the excitement over the toy takes her focus off me, and she doesn't respond well. Praise is nothing unless paired with food or toys. Petting is aversive.

This is Rosey. If I have food, she sits there and does every trick she knows (Which is not much :rofl1 and then is offended when she does not get what I have

we like to rotate high value rewards so Aero doesn't devalue one thing over another. Currently he loves turkey franks sliced thin as a high value training treat. He also responds to verbal praise and toys as well.