Weaning Dogs Off Continuous Food Rewards

As our dogs approach fluency in a behavior, we start considering variable reinforcement.

Variable reinforcement means changing up the reward pattern – maybe rewarding every second or third time the behavior is performed. The aim is to create a reward schedule that's unpredictable for the dog. One important thing in this process, when you do choose to reward, make it significant by offering multiple rewards, not just a single one.

Properly implemented, variable reinforcement can enhance a dog's drive. Initially, we teach dogs that they'll receive a reward for every correct response (continuous reinforcement). Moving to a variable reward system means the dog might not get a reward every time and might think it has made a mistake, encouraging it to try harder next time we ask for the behavior we are training.

=========================

Links

Training Dogs with Food Rewards - Online Course

The Power of Training Dogs with Markers (2024) - Online Course

=========================

When people have specific training questions we recommend that they go to our website and post those questions in the ASK CINDY on the front page of leerburg.com. Cindy has been training dogs since she was a teenager and has competed in several dog sports at a regional and national level. She was also a vet tech and owned a boarding/training and grooming business for many years as well as breeding working Dobermans and Belgian Malinois under the kennel name Kaiserhaus.

Questions posted to ASK CINDY are answered almost every day. They are also recorded in our systems if a dog owner has additional questions Cindy will review the previous Q&As and this helps her give better feedback and assistance.