rootbeerlove

Does anyone have any method training advice?

Harriet doesn't respond very well to treats (i.e. spits them out, then doesn't go back for them for an hour or so) and the only thing I haven't tried is warm human food. Cheese worked the very first time, but when I cut it up into training treat sized pieces, they became much less interesting than when I was eating it. This makes me concerned about methods used at a lot of dog training places.
She's slightly more motivated by her toys, but her attention wanes as she loses interest. She'll sit on command while we're playing and I have the toy, but if I just pick it up at a random time, or don't have the toy, the command doesn't register.
Last time I had a dog, we went to a class that used the "training" or "choke" collar method. It worked great for our dog then (20 years ago, good Lord, I'm old), she was well trained, but this method seems to have fallen out of favor.
I know she's only 3 months old, but I really want to get her on the right track early, we're working on bite inhibition at home, and any time she encounters people, and the house training is coming along. Advice please? Sorry I wrote a novel.

glb

Same problem with my basset. He went to class and would not eat any treats from anyone so training was hard. Then I found out that he liked cat food the dry kind and cat treats we have three cats. I talked to the vet and he said that as long as you did not feed him cat food but just as treats it was ok. I have now found that blend hot dogs cut length ways twice then choped up are great treats but the vet cautioned me not to over use them but they were ok to use once and a while and not to use beef hot dogs

hig4s

Have you tried just buying some liver, How to Make Liver Treats for Your Dog | eHow.com most dogs like this.

Mikey T

In General non-food motived dog is an over fed dog. If the dog is not hungry when you are training food is not going to be motivated. Feed the dog after class not before. Schedule training sesions before meal time not after. Aslo keep in mind when it comes to reward it is the dog that decided the value not you or the cost. There are dogs that prefer kibble to steak etc.

List of Reinforcers

Mikey T

Also a dog that is highly stressed will not accept food when under different circumstances it would so if the harriet will accept treates in a non-training setting then the training sesions are currently to stressfulfor her. If that is the case little learning is actual occuring during them as well.

Dog Training and Stress

[CANINE STRESS SIGNS

Signs of Stress in Dogs

canine stress

rootbeerlove

It's not just during training that she doesn't want treats. She doesn't seem interested in treats at any time. We've tried several kinds. Maybe she does need to be hungrier though.

dodolah

How much are you feeding him per meal? and how many meals in a day do you provide for him?
I agree with Mike.. I think you might slightly overfeed him.
Other than that, what kind of treat do you use?

rootbeerlove

She gets half a cup twice a day. She used to get 3 times a day 1/2 cup, but didn't eat it all. I find that if I give her 1/3 cup 3 times a day, she waits to eat it until late. So, twice a day. If this is too much, please let me know, I've had a hard time finding good guidelines, but she's gaining weight and is still near that "2" "thin" body conformation. She's got a defined waist, for sure.

As for the type of treats, we've tried several, but it seems stupid to me to buy a box of every kind of treat available, only to have her spit them out. We've tried mostly soft treats since they'd be stronger smelling. I think the cat food might be a hit, because she makes a beeline for it as soon as I let her into that part of the house. She also liked pepperoni the other day, and the vet said that was fine as long as it was only a little bit. We managed to do around 5 minutes of training on a single pepperoni the first time she saw them.

I've not tried the liver treats because, frankly, I'm a little grossed out by liver, but if they get rave reviews, I'll have to just suck it up and make them.

rw02kr43

And what you don't use of the liver for training I can use as catfish bait. :-)

Jason

Mikey T

If she is over two the she is too heavy, most owner tend to think the dog is thiner than it really is. Ask some you trust i.e. vet for an honest evaluation, keep in mind unless specificaly asked for an honest evaluation most/many vets will simply say the dog is of a good/prpoer weight because they have lost clients by saying they were over weight,

Any treat made for dogs is gooing to be relaitively low on the treat scale for most dogs. The tend to be very bland. Heck when a dog goes nuts for string cheese but is so-so about dog treates it says alot about just how bland they are. As long as training treats make up less than 10% one can use whatever, over that then there is a chance of making the diet out of balance. On easy solution is to reduce the amount of kibble fed and use the kibble pulled aside as training treats.

The following I have found very usefull as training treated cheese stinky is generally better but can't beet the convienience of string cheese, Fruits i.e. oranges, apples, pairs, bananas etc. meat, steak, hamburg, dehydrated fish, dried liver,
As an aside I had one dog the most important aspect of a dog treat was how novel it was i.e. new never had before, or the length of time between the last time she had it. What was a treat one day would be turned down the next, two weeks later is would be gladly accepted, a month or more later love it. It is all a matter of experimenting and find what works for your dog. Also keep in mind food is not the only reward nor necessarily the best reward. The reason the dog learned to sit when you have the toy is because the toy is a reward. If you want the dog to sit and stay while opening the door to go out. Then use going out the door as the reward. No need to further complicate things. That is why the large variety of possible reward in
LIST OF REINFORCERS

FWIW this is quite common unLike humans dogs are not great generalizers but powerfull discriminators. So if a sit when you have a toy lets her have the toy then than is what she has learned. Not it sit on a verbal sit cue but all the other contexted as well, playing and your possession of the toy. So you must work on training the Verbal "sit;" cue in a variety of locations under a variety of situations until a dogs will realize that "sit" always means but your butt on the ground

for more detailled explaination see

Generalization versus Discrimination

The Sit Test
SAY YES TRAINING REMINDERS

for number 15 to make any sense you need to know what the accronym D.A.S.H. means

Desire, Accuracy Speed, Habituation. That is the order of thing in training. You have to build the desire of the dog to work before anything else. Once you have desire you can work on accuracy. Once the performing at a high degree 80% or higher then you work on increaseing speed of performance and/or latency ( time it takes to respond) once that is to your satisfaction you can work on habitution that is haveing the behavior work anywhere under any sort of distraction,