# Why use food in training?



## davetgabby (Dec 29, 2007)

http://fun4fido-clickertraining4dogs.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-use-food-in-training.html


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

At Rally practice last week, someone was trying to do the course without any food rewards. The dog was distracted, and definitely not right with her. Our trainer suggested that she use more food to motivate the dog, but she responded that she had a show coming up and wanted to practice without food for the show. I thought the trainer had a great response. She said, "Would you stop feeding your kids this week if you knew a famine was coming next week?"


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## davetgabby (Dec 29, 2007)

great example Karen. I like the idea of getting rid of the food bowl, especially when they are young and you're spending (hopefully) a lot of time training them.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

davetgabby said:


> great example Karen. I like the idea of getting rid of the food bowl, especially when they are young and you're spending (hopefully) a lot of time training them.


Some of us keep training all the time.<g>

I do a lot of training every day, and have never needed to take ALL of Kodi's meal time food away. I just cut his meals down enough to make up for the extra calories he gets during training. Home training is usually kibble, (that's usually motivating enough at this point) I save the "good stuff" for classes, where there are more distractions and he's learning new things.


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## unjugetito (Jan 2, 2011)

Might be kind of hard to take the bowl away if you feed canned :suspicious: Can you imagine holding it in your hand to feed bit by bit ound:


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## The Laughing Magpie (Aug 20, 2009)

I never eliminate the meal either. I do the same as Karen I cut the meal down. When we are training things that they know and we are just practising the treats are used sparingly. New stuff gets treats everytime.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

unjugetito said:


> Might be kind of hard to take the bowl away if you feed canned :suspicious: Can you imagine holding it in your hand to feed bit by bit ound:


I had that problem when Kodi was recovering from his GI problem. He was ONLY supposed to eat the canned GI food for a couple of weeks. My trainer said that if you spread it out thin on a cookie sheet and bake it on low, you can turn it into "canned food brownies"!


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## Suzi (Oct 27, 2010)

Zoey had her first Puppy class yesterday she loved all the treats! We learned clicker training. The first thing we did was click and treat over and over. Then we walked around and said our dogs name and when they turned or acknowledged their name click and the pups were to come to us with the treat by our side. She said to say their name only once. We also learned sitting. At the end of the class we sat in a circle and held the other puppy's on their backs and touched their paws, ears, exc.
We are however training with collars and she said if the pup starts pulling to stop and let him pull on his own and when he stops pulling start walking again I cant remember if you click and treat at that point. Because Zoey never pulled
The instructor said she did really good.I was worried that I started her a bit late 5mo but I think it will be okay. I did notice she was a bit shy of the other two puppy's. At one point we just let them off leash and do what ever they wanted and she didn't want to have anything to do with the others even barked at them when they came up to her. She warmed up after about five minuets. The other two pups are a Lab and golden. Three times the size she is. She has never liked it when bigger dogs come running up to her.


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