When to Stop Using Food Rewards in Dog Training
By Ed Frawley
The answer to this question is NEVER.
Really good trainers will never stop using food rewards. What they do is manage how often they use food in their training.
When people train with food rewards, they will always meet people who say how foolish they are for training with FOOD TREATS.
They say it’s only a matter of time before we ask our dog to do something and we don't have food with us, then what will you do?
This is the reason why it is so important to understand exactly how we reduce the use of food rewards in our training program.
When we start reward-based training, our dogs are put on a continuous reward program. The dog is rewarded every time it performs a behavior correctly.
In fact, we often jackpot rewards by giving the dog several food rewards in a row. Jackpotting helps maintain engagement after the behavior.
When we start teaching a new behavior, we often reward the dog for just TRYING to perform the behavior. That’s called successive approximation.
Successive approximation during the learning phase builds the dog's drive to figure out what we want. As it gains accuracy, we gradually wean the off successive approximation and back to rewarding when the dog performs correctly.
There is a fine line between using continuous rewards and weaning the dog off the reward.
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