Treats and Training Wheels

“If I use treats, will my dog only perform when I have treats?” This is a great question. I don’t use treats for every aspect of training, however there is a time and place where treat training comes into play.

  

Treats can be like training wheels on a bike. Would a parent feel badly about sending a toddler out on their unsteady bike without training wheels? Doubtful.

“Woe is me Roger! Little Shirley’s going to turn 13 in 10 years and be the only kid in junior high with training wheels!”

“Great gadzooks Marcia! If she still needs these wheels when she’s at Harvard, we’ll have failed her!”

Highly unlikely scenario. These parents would probably realize using training wheels is a fantastic way to get their child used to balancing and coordinating all of those new skills. If Shirley continually fell off her non-training-wheeled bike, she might associate it with failure, or worse, with her parents saying the bike was safe and not trust them when they next try to convince her that the green goop on her plate is also "safe."

It's similar in dog training. Let’s take this bike metaphor for a metaphorical ride:

Let's say we're training Fido to sit and stay when guests enter the home. Usually it takes minutes with treats to capture this new behavior. We reinforce Fido’s new greeting routine daily because for the past months? Years? Fido has been in the habit of greeting guests any way he sees fit. By using treats as training wheels, we forge a steady, safe passage to this new, more desired behavior.

When Fido has mastered his new skill and both owner and Fido are confident, it’s time to raise the training wheels just a little. Fido’s owner treats less often, interjecting more praise, but still has treats in hand so those training wheels are in place if needed. Much further down the road the training wheels come up a bit further, then further.  

“Holy Toledo Roger! Poor little Shirley can’t ride her bike on gravel, sidewalks, or on hills. Bike riding isn’t for Shirley. Let’s get her a recorder.”

Hopefully Shirley’s parents wouldn’t jump to the assumption above. They would see that Shirley needs to practice daily under various biking conditions.

Similarly, Fido needs to practice, even if guests don’t enter the home daily. Practicing going to his spot at the door and eliciting an excited response by knocking on the door, or asking a family member to go outside and having daily “Fido drills,” all strengthen Fido’s new behavior. When guests do arrive and Fido’s shuffled off to another room, everyone has missed a great learning opportunity.

Remember those tikes with the training wheels so far off the ground they no longer served any real purpose? This is when the behavior is so well-established, Fido and owner knows what’s expected when the doorbell rings.

That’s when the training wheels come off!

**Warning: Once Shirley’s training wheels come off and she takes a three year hiatus from bike riding in her 20’s to pursue basket weaving in Timbuktu, chances are she’ll get back on her bike with little to no effort. 

Not so with Fido. If there’s a lapse in training with Fido, oftentimes the training wheels have to be reattached for a while to get him back on the road to success.