What does your dog work best for?

[MericoX]

What do you find works best, reward wise, for your dogs? Who has food or toy motivated dogs?

-Kiba works for food. Food food food. I always joke she hates agility, but does it because of the numerous food rewards.
-Stryder is a major foodie, but he will also work really hard for his frisbee.
-Tsuki also does best with food. I can at least get awhile with using smaller and softer food because of her size and amount of teeth.
-Lincoln used to be mostly toy motivated. It took me awhile to get used to it because of all the dogs prior to him I'd use food. With working him more in a group with the dogs, he's gotten more food motivated, but for best results I use small treats and end in a huge play session with his fox toy.
-Charlie is a mixture of both. She loves stuffies and food.

Also Lincoln has a thing for carby snacks. If at any time I have something like crackers or Cheez-its (which isn't very often), I have an annoying orange blur trying his hardest to work for it.

 

[Flyinsbt]

Pirate works well for food, but his favorite thing to work for is his ball. Which was originally a huge PITA, because he didn't retrieve, he just wanted the ball. Then I had to go get it from him. Now he does bring it back, but he still doesn't really want to give it to me. So still a bit of a pain. I need to work on getting him to tug with me.

His mum, Tess, will work for anything. Really doesn't matter much. I was doing some agility training with her once, and I stopped to talk to a friend we were training with. Tess thought she should be rewarded, so she found this little, 1" scrap of fabric on the ground that had come off of someone else's toy, and brought it to me to tug with. :lol-sign:

 

[Saeleofu]

Both for food.

As far as toys go, Gavroche's best is his Jolly Ball and Logan's is either the fox tail or the "Cow Nipple Sucker" :rofl1: I've been working on tugging as a reward for Logan and he LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVES tugging with the nipple sucker lol

 

[BostonBanker]

Food for both. Gusto will work for his tug, but food motivates him more.

 

[Laurelin]

Food here. Both will work well enough for praise and Mia works sometimes for the ball but food is just simpler for most things and more effective.

 

[StephyMei1112]

FOOD. Tennis balls sometimes tho.

 

[Shai]

Kim -- Food. She'll work for toys but only because they mean food.
Webster -- Food. We've recently finally gotten some real intrinsic value added to tugs and he does go all goofy and leap-y for tennis balls but it all goes back to food.
Mira -- Toys and food. Particularly retrieveable toys...tennis balls, bumpers, and the like. If I try to give her food rewards while retrieving she will either spit them out or hold them in her mouth to get me off her back then drop them on her way to the next retrieve. She's a big foodie though too and switches between tug and food and short retrieves well. Full on field marks or chuck-it and she wants nothing to do with food. Her biggest reinforcer is a dead duck but ummm those don't really fit in my pocket very well and would be frowned on in agility/obedience/conformation/etc. She'll also work for praise but it's not as flashy.

All three are optimists and harbor a deep belief that I may magically have something of value, though they have no reason to believe so

 

[yoko]

Food.

Even the thought of food. I can hold my fingers together like I'm holding a real small treat and yoshi goes crazy trying to do what I ask so she can get to the 'treat'

 

[Aleron]

With mine it depends. The three youngsters will work for food or toys almost equally well depending on the situation. Whim is most excited by things involving chasing. Whim has a harder time switching from one reward to another than Savvy. Roust has a hard time letting go of his toys but he doesn't get stuck on just having the toy (he had that tendency when he was younger for sure). Whim and Savvy also love to play silly games, Roust isn't quite there yet.

The older group: Jagger likes toys, tugging and food pretty much equal depending the the circumstance. he also likes to play as a reward and is well versed in getting "life rewards", probably the most of any of my dogs. Ziggy likes toys, tugging and food but he finds taking a reward in a stimulating situation like while doing agility to be annoying. I have a recent video of him where he's tugging like crazy, I'm lifting him off the ground but as soon as we start doing agility he can't really think about the toy. he just runs around growling and barking if I try to get him interested in the toy. He will take food, so that is the only reward I can use in agility with him but he doesn't almost like food in agility the way he normally likes food. He's one of the most frantic dogs I have ever known LOL. Loki and Belle are the only two that don't really like toys in training. Loki I got at almost a year old and I think she was discouraged from playing with people in her first home. She likes toys but not in an interactive way. And Belle is just weird LOL

 

[OutlineACDs]

Rumor: toys, frisbee, tug, ball.... anything. She will tug and fetch until the cows come home. As she ages she's becoming a bit more like her mom and is more of a foodie now than she has ever been. She doesn't switch between toys and food though, so toys win preference with her. All of our shaping sessions are with food and she's quite a motivated shaper.

Zen: toys, he loves his bumper, frisbee, tug toy, ball, jolly ball, whatever. I don't let him retrieve much anymore due to him being 100% kamikaze and really doing a number on his iliopsoas before, but we still tug maniacally. If he does any fetches they are short, low to the ground, or else I throw the toy and make him wait until it lands then send him. In the conformation ring we use food, and for shaping we use food, so he likes either.

 

[JacksonsMom]

OMG FOOD. He's a foodie. This dog will do ANYTHING for food. lol. Not really dog treats so much... he'll do it and we use them for training, but if I REALLY want him to be "into" it and putting his all... I whip out the cheese or some chicken.

 

[Fran101]

Cuddles.

I know it seems weird. But Romeo will do ANYTHING, I mean ANYTHING...to get back in a lap or under the covers. He will work longer and more enthusiastically just to be rewarded with a few seconds of a "rush cuddle" lol

other than that, food. Hotdogs especially

 

[crazedACD]

Romeo is about even on the toy/food scale but gets more excited about toys. This can be good or bad .

The rest are mostly food. Except Skye...uh..she might work for a live squirrel strapped on a remote controlled car . Maybe.

 

[Maxy24]

Tucker will work for both food and tug games but because he was always taught with food he will not tug in a training session. It's more like if we start playing tug I can then train him with the toy. But if he's expecting food and I bust out a toy I get a very confused looking dog. So food is his number one, even though he physically appears more excited while we play tug.

 

[momto8]

Mine all love food! And the clicker, they really love the clicker. With the exception of Roxy..sometimes she will go nuts for the food and clicker and sometimes she looks at me like i'm an idiot lol

 

[Emily]

Mackenzy: Food or tennis ball... she really loves toys but probably food a bit more, however, early on I created a dog with very unbalanced drives by allowing her to choose food over toys. So now after a lot of work she switches fluidly between food and a tennis ball. And she's obsessed with both. LOL. She's a really easy, fun dog to work. Except omg she food sharks so bad. My hands! *cries* She's also motivated by lots of running and jumping. She finds doing obstacles and jumps fairly exciting on their own.

Keeva: Is being crazy a reward? Because that's her favorite. However, she likes food and toys, I'd say probably toys a little more though it depends on the situation. Though honestly she's young and we're still hammering out the details of her drives and our relationship. She loves to chase things, her drive is pretty primitive so things that wiggle along the ground make her very excited. However, she also enjoys tug and fetch in their own right. The flirtpole makes her a zombie. FLIIIIIIRTPOOOOOLE. As far as food goes, her food drive is like... medium high. In very stimulating situations she will refuse it, but normally she'll eat just about anything.

But really, what she likes the most? Chasing me and barking at me, and punching with her little feet. LOL. She really likes interactive games with me. All I have to do to get her wound up is stomp and say, "Are you READY?" and she starts barking and bouncing. LOL Everyone at agility class thinks our wind-up routine is pretty funny, I'm sure.

 

[PlottMom]

Mine only like food... It's almost depressing. Lol

 

[-bogart-]

praise.

 

[AdrianneIsabel]

Sloan, her ball.

Backup, a tug.

Arnold, food.

Shamoo, work?

 

[Linds]

Work hardest for? Traveler would be his ball and Didgie would be her tug.

But work best for? Probably food for both.

With Traveler and his tennis ball he's too into it, too focused and gets stuck on well known behaviors. It's great for really really high end rewards but hard to use to actually train and get anywhere.

Didgie I can get pretty far with the tug but she gets herself seriously amped up and anything that needs to be done methodically won't happen so we can't use it for shaping. For things like enthusiasm, speed and fun it works great but for precision not so much.

They are both food whores luckily though so most training is done with food which adds in a more thoughtful approach that tends to be less scattered and I try to ideally swtich to tug/ball as a jackpot and to bring back even more pep.