The Rules of Play

By Ed Frawley

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Sometimes I forget that we often have new dog trainers (who just got their first dog) that come to our website and are not aware of the information we offer in our training videos.

Today Cindy got an email from a gentleman who has his first dog. He wanted to train his dog using his dog's favorite toy rather than food.

She explained that he can do what he wants with his dog but almost always it's a better idea to start training with food (a reward high-value food—not Walmart dog biscuits). There are many reasons for this.

1. Most puppies have high food drive than toy drive. This often changes after the puppy goes through teething
2. The problem with using a toy on a new dog is you are faced with several problems. You can only reward the dog one time (which is when you give the toy) whereas with the food you can give the dog several different food rewards while training the same behavior (some call this jackpotting).
3. When a toy is used the training needs to be interrupted while you get the toy back from the dog. If the dog has not been trained to bring the toy back to the handler this creates a problem. If the dog doesn't want to give up the toy that creates a second problem.

Having to chase the dog down and then have a little argument with him about giving up the toy is not going to make the dog enjoy his training session, which is what our ultimate goal is. We want our dogs to look forward to training. That's not going to happen if you have a mini argument over toys.

So we tell new trainers to learn marker training by using food. Once that's done, and the dog understands Markers, the trainer can focus on teaching THE RULES OF PLAY, which are:

1. Play when I ask you to play
2. Out the toy when I ask you to OUT THE TOY
3. Bring the TOY BACK after I release or toss the toy

Once our dogs understand these rules, a toy is a very effective tool. We teach these rules when we train the dog to play tug.

If you are new to Leerburg, I would recommend that you read the article I wrote titled The Power of Training Dogs with Markers.

If you want to learn how to train using a toy reward, I recommend the training video we did with Michael Ellis titled The Power of Playing Tug with Your Dog.

If you have questions, feel free to view our Q&A database in our Ask Cindy section. If you can't find what you're looking for, you can contact Cindy with your dog training question.

The bottom line is, if you want to make training fun for you and your dog, it's worth taking the time it takes to do it right and make that your primary goal.

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About Author

Ed Frawley

Ed Frawley is the founder of Leerburg. He has been training dogs since the 1950s. For 30 years, Ed bred working bloodline German Shepherds and has produced over 350 litters. During this time, Ed began recording dog training videos and soon grew an interest in police service dogs. His narcotic dogs have been involved in over 1,000 narcotics searches resulting in hundreds of arrests in the state of Wisconsin. Ed now solely focuses on producing dog training courses with renowned dog trainers nationwide. If you want to learn more about Ed, read about his history here.

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