All the things I wish I knew before I got my first ever puppy!
You may have heard the term ‘high value treats’ mentioned before, either at training or on this site, but you may not be entirely sure what it means or what treats to use.
There are some common misconceptions that a high value treat needs to be something rich and fatty that your dog can’t have a lot of, i.e. the processed puppy treats that you buy in pet stores. This in fact isn’t the case!
When I first got Cooper I brought a couple of different packs of treats from the pet store, I mainly went for them on the fact that they were age appropriate and were marketed as a training tool for puppies. It was only when I got home that I noticed that on the back of them, a lot of them said that you should limit your dog to 3-4 a day. Not helpful for training at all!
It was then suggested by a trainer to hold back some of Cooper’s daily food allowance to use as treats throughout the day. This worked, and still is something we do on a daily basis, however your dog will get used to it quickly, and although it will do some things for the reward of it, it will pretty quickly get tired of it.
This came to light when we started puppy training classes, at home when there’s no one else around or no other dogs to play with, a dogs kibble is a pretty valuable thing to them, but take them outside and put them in an environment with new people and new dogs to play with- then it’s a whole new ball game.
For example, say you’re over the park playing and your puppy is off lead with another dog and you want it to come back to you when called, if you try and entice it back with kibble it’s probably going to be like ‘hey I can get that whenever I want at home, playing with this dog is far more fun, I’m going to carry on doing this!’If however you have a treat that your dog doesn’t get often at home, or only gets on special occasions, then the chances are the treat is going to beat the draw of playing with the other dog.
For Cooper, the magic word is ‘chicken’, if you say this word around him, even if he’s down the far end of the garden, he will come bounding in at full speed to get his favourite treat.An ideal high value treat is one that you can give multiples of, but at the same time, it’s slightly ‘naughtier’ than a regular bit of kibble and you won’t want to give it ALL the time. I’ve seen people use all sorts of things before, chicken, cheese, bits of sausage, salmon cake. It’s really down to you to find something that your dog enjoys. If you do choose to use manufactured treats as opposed to home cooked, have a look at the ingredients list first. Some treats contain ridiculously high levels of fat. You ideally want a treat which is predominantly meat, and not full of grains and other fillers.
Check out my article on the top 10 treats for your dog below.
