Here and there, I read and heard the treats being put down. I’ll give my viewpoint here.
“It does not work”
At what time do you give it to him/her ? While he/she is lashing out at someone triggering him/her (another dog, a man with a hat) ?
How many ? Is the treat in question motivating enough ? If you hand it out left and right, your treat, as the fact of handing it out, will lose value for they will not show up accurately.
When to give it ? Personally, I give it : when training a particular behavior, I give it after marking (which means after indicating to the dog that I like what he just did) as a reward ; when changing an emotion towards an unpleasant stimulus (to put it plain, the treat arrives to change the vision that the dog has).
How to give it ? Does that seem obvious to you ? Are you going to answer me by hand ? Well, actually, it's more complex. For dogs who did not know me, and could not stand that a stranger is interested in them (therefore tended to charge or flee), I bent down to gently throw treats to the ground near them. My goal : that each of my movements is synonymous with the arrival of a pleasant element. My voice : at that time, it had no value in their eyes. A caress : with some dogs, it is a way to get bitten, and it is not part of my objectives the first time we have met (nor the following ones either !). Ignoring him/her completely ? He/she does not ignore me, neither my presence at his/her home, nor the fact that I am speaking with his/her humans ; and it’s a choice I have made to communicate with the dog animal as well. The treat then serves me to break the ice, to give the dog a first good impression of myself (if he/she has been little or not socialized, if he/she has had negative experiences, his/her perception of my body language may be affected).
“I want him/her to obey for myself”
Become a treat ! For that, you will need to have a relationship of which the value will be as strong or even more than the stimulus that triggers him/her. Remember that certain actions are self-reinforcing for the dog, which means that whatever your relationship, they will reproduce them because in themselves they give him/her what he/she is looking for. Furthermore, when he performs a behavior that you desire, does it do it for you or to avoid a part of you that he saw one day (even if it was not addressed to him) ?
“He/she is going to be fat”
How big are your treats ? What is their nutritional value ? Do you deduct them from his/her daily portion ? Do you give them excessively ? Whether you use tubes of pâté or cream, or a solid food, you consider the size of your little finger nail and divide it in half again. If they are too large, your dog will have moved on to something else while chewing and swallowing ; you will need to refocus him/her on yourself. A large well-roasted chicken ? A cheese that stinks so much that you would tear your nostrils off ? A dried mackerel ? Peanut butter on a duck neck?
When I say "treat", it is food. My job is not to make dogs get bigger for the holiday season, or to get them bigger just to have their owners to pay for walks. It can be any digestible food your dog is not allergic to and likes. Indeed, for the desired effect to show up, he/she alone determines what pleases him/her, neither you, nor me, nor any other being.
“My dog is too excited where there is food"
Is he/she as excited when there is another stimulus (toy, dog, cat, bike) ? So, the behavior is not caused by the treat but by its lack of management of its emotions. If that is the type of food that arouses him/her, compared to what you are asking, it may be too highly valuable. Conversely, if its value is low compared to his/her effort, he/she will appear demotivated or will be quickly distracted.
Would food be so much valuable that he/she would do anything despite him/herself ? In this case, it is not handed sympathetically because it does not take his/her emotions into account.
“I want to use some other rewards”
Then you have plenty of choices ! Toy, game, resumption of the walk, go see a dog or human friend, a caress, words, a pleasant activity.
But how valuable are they ? Not for you, not for what you think they are, but for your dog ? And that, in each of the contexts in which he/she is.
If you use another tool than the treat, but reinforce a behavior, the principle is nothing but the same (provided it has the same effect) !
“It's nothing but bribe”
Firstly, I am not fond of the term for it implies that the intention of the human is to deceive the dog. Still, I have seen many dogs end up "educating" their humans because they understood they could get a treat seeing some gesture if they had performed a certain action just before. If you are recalling your dog with treats in hand, I don’t even call it recall anymore ; if he hears the bag or sees your arm moving, you just told him "treat" when he may not even be on his way back yet. On the other hand, in medical training, I don't hesitate to tell the dog which position to take with a treat. Then, I prefer to speak of “food guide”.
The timing, the moment when you give your treat, will make all the difference between knowing if what you have in hand, this same little piece of ham, is it : a lure, a reward, an associative element ? Is it your treat that will transform the perception of the stimulus or the aversive stimulus that will infect the perception of your treat ?
Moreover, treats is like a gauge of the dog’s emotional state. If the latter has very subtle signals or which are altered by certain pleasant stimuli, the way in which he/she will refuse or take the treat will partly indicate his level of negative stress towards the aversive stimulus.
In itself, being a basic need (to feed), it requires no learning to be appreciated (I’m talking about eating there, not the taste itself).
Treats are therefore not just lures, nor reinforcers. And any lure or enhancer is not a treat.
“I cannot take it away, I’m going to have always some with me”
Several reasons are often underlying this consideration. On the one hand, the dog may not actually have acquired the behavior yet and may need more training time ; which explains why you have not start diminishing or alternating yet with other types of reinforcer. Either you consider “paying” your dog for each action that suits you, or you do it randomly, or you decrease until you no longer distribute treats. If you opt for the latter, I just hope you plan to shift the value of the treat to something else. I once advised a client to use his girlfriend as a treat... Oops ! Fortunately, he understood what I meant : as she was very valuable for his dog, her presence and her voice should replace the food treats. But if you take away any motivation whatsoever, you also risk depriving the dog of the reason for the existence of a behavior.
“The dog’s capacities are underestimated”
What to do ? When I use them because a dog is in “I'm-going-to-eat-the-individual-facing-me” mode (dog or human), I don't ask myself this kind of question because I observe an animal that is under the yoke of its own emotions. He/she then does nothing but assess his/her environment through them. However, it is possible that they result from negative past experiences or a lack of socialization or other reasons... I am the first one to speak about anticipating, still in real life nobody is able to control all of what happens. I use then the treat to accompany the dog while training him/her ; decreasing it and varying the type of reward or pleasant association that the dog receives shows me that learning becomes more ingrained.
“You are actually nothing but a candy machine”
To get the right result with a treat, what will you need ? A dog, treats, of appropriate value and size (neither too large nor too small, neither tasteless nor too tasty), a thoughtful and reasoned training plan, observation of the environment, analyzing it, anticipation, precision in your body language and your movements.
If you hand them out incessantly, is your dog learning anything ? Is this action sustained ? Is it an emotionally intense environment ? If you do not give him/her a break between each food intake, he/she does not have time to take information and therefore learns nothing. You are just controlling your dog. Are you in the early stages of training ? If you have not diminished and wish to do so, what learning is not acquired for you to achieve it ? If you are in an association plan to change emotional perception, are you too close ? Observe how your dog takes the treats ; return to distance or resume work at another time.
So, does handing a treat out is done without thinking ? Without observation ? Just because the dog presses the “good doggie” button ?
“Dogs are social animals”
So they live without treats ? Without anything motivational ? Let me first know what "natural behavior" means in a domesticated animal, who has been genetically modified by humans, selected according to certain traits…
It also means that the treat is only seen as a basic tasty element.
A social animal lives in a group. In this case, the companion dogs essentially live in a group made up of humans. The members of this group follow an organization which establishes relations between them. Some of the elements of this organization are motivation, dislike, pleasure, rejection. Do the treats have still no place ?
The treat is a tool that has proven its effectiveness in many contexts and in a non-negligible way.
Learn how to hand it out and find out to get an idea ! Understand how to use it when training... And enjoy this tasty work tool !
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