Training treats

[pompomandpeach]

We’re full of excitement (and nerves!) to be welcoming home our first dog this Friday. He is an 8 week old cockapoo puppy, veeeery long awaited dog, finally everything aligned that needed to, so here we go!

Just wondered what your favourite treats are for training? I have heard of people using little bits of cheese, bits of sausage, chicken, etc.

I have also heard people mention using their pup’s kibble as a “low value” treat. Pets at Home give a free bag of dried food when you join their “VIP club”, but it doesn’t match the food our pup is coming to us on. Would it be worth getting it and using a few pieces here and there as a “treat”? Or just not to bother?

Thank you very much in anticipation!

We use tiny cubes of cheese, hotdogs, cocktail sausages, chicken or Primula for high value treats, or I bake my own using sardines and cheese, or banana and peanut butter - basically you need something that will be very stinky/tempting for the pup so it's more desirable than whatever it is you want them not to do!

Kibble didn't really work for us as she was like 'nah it's not that interesting so I'm going to ignore you until you offer me something better'.

It will be a little bit trial and error as to what works for your pup I reckon - good luck!

JR pate is our go to for training treats. We do use other bits as well, but most shop bought things shouldn't be given to puppies in any great quantity (or aren't suitable until 4 months plus) but I feel happier using the pate as it's a complete food and we need an awful lot of treats to get through a training class.

I’ve always just used any old kibble as treats (I don’t actually feed kibble, she eats wet food), i often choose a cat kibble as they are smaller than the dog ones so I can give more.
High value I used cheese, ham, chicken etc

Any JR treats are fab, and dried sprats, fish bites from the hollings range. I only feed natural treats 🐶🙂

The stinkier the better! My pain in the arse spaniel would only ever come back during her recall training for bits of kippers. I stunk!

Best thing to do is to try a few out and see which ones get them excited. I always reduced my dog’s food according to how many treats she had that day.

Any human food but you can also mix it in with kibble so that it’s more of a jackpot/ slot machine scenario (Ie you keep going because you may just hit the jackpot rather than assigning one cue as more high value over another).
Ours is a huge fan of cheese straws…

With a puppy use all their daily food allowance as training treats. If a dog works for all their food you have less need to worry about high value and low value treats. Especially when they are puppies.

JR pate is great and easy to use though

I use little bits of dried liver.

Mine isn't remotely interested in kibble when he's out on walks (unless he's on lead) - it's just not exciting enough.

For recall, I use cubes of cheese, cut of cocktail sausages, bits of cooked chicken or dried sprats. Doggy pâté is also a good option (JRPetProducts sell it) - you just cut it up into tiny little cubes.

Buy a lucky mat or use an old chopping board. Put very small amounts of lots of treats as mentioned above on it and see what pup likes the most.

Mine loved dried liver. Just don't let the bag rip when out on a walk. I looked like the pied piper of dogs following me along the trail

We used kibble from his daily food allowance in the house and garden for training sit, stay, come, down, paw but in training classes and out and about when much more simulating and distracting Arden Grange liver pate, JR pate/cheese/hot dogs in tiny cubes. Stinkier the better for our lab. Sprats for longer distance recalls. We've moved from that to mix of lots of fuss/praise interspersed with treats and he seems to love the fuss as much... So far. Generally he has his food from Kongs or large homemade snuffle mat so he has to do a bit of work to get it rather than just gutsing it down in one go from a bowl. He has ostrich bone/long lasting chews to wind down with after bouncy off lead field runs.

I use a mix of tiny bits of cooked chicken, JR Pate and their whole meat treats and Lily's kitchen do lovely salmon and chicken ones my puppy loves.

Today I've baked my own treats as an experiment as they do end up eating loads (and costing loads!) as you bribe train them to pee outside, sit etc.

Sausages are basically puppy crack for mine, so I only break those out every once in a while!!

Not tried cheese yet. Or sprats. Because he has farts of doom.

We buy big bags of Platinum Iberico Pork and Greens kibble - it's ridiculously expensive as kibble, but works out very cheap as treats! It's very good quality, cold pressed rather than dried, so we can break pieces in half, and lovely and stinky (i.e. high value). But it doesn't make your pockets greasy! I think you can get free samples, possibly from their website...

@Pigletpoglet

We buy big bags of Platinum Iberico Pork and Greens kibble - it's ridiculously expensive as kibble, but works out very cheap as treats! It's very good quality, cold pressed rather than dried, so we can break pieces in half, and lovely and stinky (i.e. high value). But it doesn't make your pockets greasy! I think you can get free samples, possibly from their website...

I use Innocent Pet - a similar product, air dried, expensive, BUT when used as treats is really economical compared with other treats. Keeps really fresh in the packaging, easy to break into smaller bits. I get through about a kilo a month for 3 dogs - and i use a lot of treats, do lots of training. Works out at about £3.50 a week, so just over £1.16 per dog pw.

Sorry for the delay in returning to the thread. Thank you for all the useful advice, it has given me lots of food for thought (pun partially intended!). I am hearing that it’s a case of the smellier the better!!

Cheese and hot dogs. But his all time favourite treat is bubbles!!

His recall when in the garden was shocking. You'd call him, he'd ignore you. You'd call again, he'd look at you and then carry on sniffing. After a few minutes smelling the same blade of grass, he'd come trotting in!

When I used bubbles, he came in first time!!