When can I stop rewarding my dog with treats?

One of the first questions many people ask when they start training their dog is ‘when can I stop using treats?’. And I completely understand why. A lot of people have concerns about the cost of constantly buying dog treats, whether their dog will become overweight and the impracticality of always carrying treats. We’re also all told by society that dogs should respond to trained cues ‘just because they’re told’ without expecting rewards.

So it’s no surprise that most people think that the goal of training is to get dogs to the point that they never get rewarded with treats. But that’s not reasonable expectation, it’s not fair to your dog and is likely to be detrimental to your training. Instead of stopping rewarding your dog with treats completely, there are some easy changes to make your training easier on your wallet and better for your dog’s health. And you’ll find that once you get used to it, always having treats easily available and taking them on walks isn’t the massive hassle you think it is…

Why you should train your dog with treats

When you’re training your dog you need to teach them new behaviours (like loose-lead walking and recall) and then motivate your dog to continue choosing to do those behaviours. Rewarding with treats is the easiest way to do this. Every dog is motivated by food (yes, every single one) because eating is essential for survival. Treats make it really easy to teach new behaviours because most dogs will follow a treat on their nose - so you can show them what behaviour you want and reward them for it. 

Every time you reward your dog for a behaviour, you add value to that behaviour. Every single reward is like putting money in the piggy bank - the more money in it, the more likely it is that your dog will repeat that behaviour. If you want your dog to recall, you’ll need to have a lot of money in your recall piggy bank. That means you’ll have to have rewarded your dog for recall many, many, many times before expecting them to do it in reality. Luckily rewarding with treats makes it really easy to practise a behaviour a lot in a short time period - quickly adding lots of money to your piggy bank.

If you want your dog to walk beautifully on-lead like this, you’re going to need to reward them a lot…

Choosing the rights treats for your dog

Not all treats are equal and it’s important to choose the right treats when you’re training. All treats have different values and you’ll want to choose higher-value treats when you’re teaching new behaviours, training in distracting environments or practising any behaviours your dog finds difficult. Once your dog finds a behaviour easier, you can usually reward with lower-value treats. Generally, treats like meat or cheese are high-value and the treats you’d buy in a packet from a pet shop are low-value. But every dog is an individual so you need to work out what treats your dog loves. You can use your dog’s standard food as a reward - but only if they consider it high enough value for the behaviour you’re asking for.

The biggest mistake people make is rewarding with treats that are way too big. This ends up being very expensive, risks dogs putting on too much weight and means dogs get very full, very quickly - unnecessarily shortening training sessions. For most adult dogs and large puppies treats should be no bigger than a pea and most puppies and very small adult dogs should have even smaller treats. So the easiest way to reward your dog for every behaviour while reducing how many treats they’re eating is to just cut the treats smaller. Most pet shop treats can be cut up so just spend some time when you buy them cutting them up and put them back in the packet for later.

Why you shouldn’t reduce rewards quickly

Rushing to reduce the number of treats they give their dog is one of the biggest mistakes people make when training. If you stop rewarding your dog as soon as they understand a behaviour, that behaviour’s piggy bank won’t have much money in it. So when your dog realises that they won’t get rewarded for the behaviour they’ll stop doing it - quickly undoing all your training.

If you stop rewarding your dog for recall, they might find their own reward by chasing that squirrel.

Your dog will always choose the behaviour they’re most likely to get rewarded for. But rewards don’t just come from you, your dog’s very capable of finding their own rewards. That might be chasing a squirrel, stealing food off your plate or jumping up at a stranger for fuss. Of course, you want your dog to choose the desirable behaviour you’ve taught them. But if you stop rewarding them for it, they’ll choose the undesirable behaviour you’re desperate to avoid. So it’s important to always continue to reward your dog for behaviours you want to see again - and it’s especially important for behaviours like loose-lead walking and recall that keep you and your dog safe.

How to reward your dog without treats

Treats aren’t the only way to reward your dog - they’re just the most convenient in most situations. You can use anything your dog likes as a reward. That could be tug, fetch, sniffing, digging, fuss, play with other dogs or literally anything else. So if your dog’s on a restricted diet for any reason you can still reward them for desirable behaviours without using treats. For leave-it you could reward your dog with a game of tug. For loose-lead walking you could reward your dog with the chance to sniff. Or for recall you could reward your dog by allowing them to go back to playing with their doggy friends.

Written by Juniper Indigo, dog trainer in Tiverton and Exeter