No food for platz? Even w/early puppy training???

Bet,

Use food for puppy. Remember that puppy inprint to training is very important. You want a puppy to enjoy training which is why food, toys and a lot of play makes good puppy inprint and becomes good attitude to training. As your pup grows into young adult, she will always look forward to training and half your battle is already won. Just don't rush it and like Ed likes to say "Don't be ahead of yourself"

I had seen many dogs in OB excercise whom are doing the commands slow and scrappy because they have to do it. This is for sore eyes because they are being trained with too much compulsion and ended up hating the bloody OB's <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> . I prefer mine to enjoy doing the job and look forward to my hugs,petting and fetch play at every success.

You can slowly decrease food usage once the puppy understands solidly. Once you can train a dog fully on this method you can always try other methods to see the different results but dont confuse yourself too much for now.

Hope this makes sense to you.

I've been using food on the 8 month old Austrailian Shepard I started working two weeks ago. She was handled to rough from her first "trainer". So far EVERYTHING has been a game with her and she is doing fantastic. After a few more weeks, I'll wean her off of the food reward for her sits, downs, stands. When/if she starts deciding that she can respond at her liesier, then I'll start corrections. She will randomly get food reward after the correction. She will ALWAYS get priase. I'm going slow with her because she hardly knew her name three weeks ago, but she's begging to learn. I don't try any commands from a distance till they perform 100% at my side. Once they are consistant at the end of a thirty foot line, I'm pretty satisfyed I have control. Then start up close again with distractions. IMHO, if your having to go back to the dog for a correction, you moved away to fast.

Hey Bob,

You nailed it right home there. If I may list down the sequence it would be

1) Food to begin the teach
2) food to reinforce the desired action
3) Food to lengthen the time on the action
4) Food/play on success in the action
5) increase distance and reward with food/play
6) reduce distance and add distraction and continue rewards.
7) increase distance and add distraction
8) Go back to step 1 again and prove them in public and build them up to step 8 again.

Hey Bob,

You nailed it right home there. If I may list down the sequence it would be

1) Food to begin the teach
2) food to reinforce the desired action
3) Food to lengthen the time on the action
4) Food/play on success in the action
5) increase distance and reward with food/play
6) reduce distance and add distraction and continue rewards.
7) increase distance and add distraction
8) Go back to step 1 again and prove them in public and build them up to step 8 again.

Praise is always there in every steps to reinforce the correct behaviour.

Always set up for success meaning dont try something you are not sure of the dog able to do and have no way of enforcing.

Correction only comes in once the dog can do the intended behaviour 9 out of 10 times with food motivator. I prefer mine 10 out of 10 times though <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> In other words, we must know how to recognise a defiance from a confusion and every correction always follows with a praise/pet/even rewards when the right action is solicited to get the dog up to the mental level before the correction. This will tell the dog that you dont hold any grudges and keep the attitude high.

Bet,

Weaning the puppy from food is a method by itself. If you want attitude, speed and accuracy you need to be able to reward for the best action. Meaning after the dog 80% understand a sit you will only reward a speed sit. slow sit only get praise but no food but speed sit gets big praise and good food. Then when speed is good you do same for speed and accurate sit the same way. This way is to increase the standard and challenge for the dog. Otherwise the fido gets bored if challenge not increase. After you are happy with the speed, accurate sit and fido having good attitude then you only reward every 3 times then 5 times then 2 times then 9 times with no fix patern for you to get the idea. Sometimes food sometimes play sometimes good shake and pet. The idea is for fido to know that reward is coming but he just doesn't dang know when and what. So he tries harder and give you better sit always so rewards can come, he hope it comes more often but you only gives for a really good sit. So in other words food and play rewards are gonna be there always just he doesn't know when. This is what I mean in weaning off food which is in fact not 100% as I always like to have more options to train a dog.

In a protection work, we uses more of drive work with prey predominantly in the begining. This can be achieved to the same level as food by use of tugs, ball etc. Many people likes to use ball instead as they always have one handy in the pocket to put a dog into drive and good for focus work too and uses no food at all. This is also ok as food or toy is just a tool for drive and get good attitude.

Just that from my experimentation I want more options of tools to train the dogs. Sometimes when I don't have a ball I can grab some cookies and get to OB work. When I'm not near any food I can grab a tube or a stick to put him into drive. So dog training open up your imagination and creativeness and the whole world is your abode. As for now, don't get confused and play more with your favourite toys and food. Sorry to write so long. I can get pretty carried away but I believe you will get the idea. Good Luck

James -Thanks, I'm saving that for personal reference!
Hopefully her prey drive will continue to develop as I work with her - I prefer to use toys over food for rewards, but this one is VERY food motivated. But she is also eager to please - unlike my aussie cross who is always trying to outsmart me!

Bet,


Glad that you have found the suggestion helpful. BTW what is your target for your puppy? AKC OB? SchH? etc? You should 1st set your aims tailor the plans and work towards that. Since you posted here under AKC/CD I assume all the while that you are into AKC OB.

So in AKC OB food and toys used together in intervals are ok. If your puppy works best with toys then use it. The chances are that puppy learns faster but continue to use toys along with food. When she grows and matures she may start to enjoy the toys too even better than food sometimes. So no need to push her to the toys but work with her best drive for success.

Well I would *love* to do schutzhund, but this is not the pup. I have been doing some drive building work, but I am planning to get an ILP # (she was a rescue) & compete in obedience & tracking. She's a happy girl who loves everyone and like I said is responding very well to the training we've done, so I think this is the way to go.
She shows decent prey drive with my other dog, but almost none for me. I think her 1st owners ruined that by following the 'traditional' pet-puppy training rules - no mouthing, no rough-housing, person always wins tug-of-war - but she's a great dog and I figure I'll just focus on her strengths & go from there.