How many treats?!

[DueyCheatemAndHow]

We are picking up our puppy next Sunday so we've been reading Steve Mann's Easy Peasy Puppy Squeezy. All really helpful.

But...

I'm really unsure about how many treats we should be giving her? When he says reinforce with a treat this is obviously done multiple times but it sounds like we will.be giving her loads of treats a day! How many is normal in the early days??

I use their food allowance! Shove in a couple of higher value treats so it’s like a jackpot if they get one :)

Yep just feed them their food while training rather then at meals

With our first we had all these good intentions of keeping a portion of her food aside for rewarding throughout the day. However she had other ideas and would barely eat her food nevermind consider it any form of reward! (She's a lab so this was unexpected!).

JRPate is good for training, a 400g pack can be cut up to make a lot of treats and can be frozen in daily portions.

It's all very well using their dry food, but for many dogs it's not high value enough - especially once they're able to go out on walks.

What you do need to remember is to take any treats out of their daily food allowance - so if they have lots of treats during training, you need to massively cut down their meals.

Cut the treats up much smaller than in the pack. Most packs say 6-8 treats a day max as can give loose stools. But if you cut the treat into say 4 pieces each then you suddenly have a load more "treats" for lots of training!

You can by training treats, which are thumbnail size. I cut them down even further, so my guys practically work for dust.

And, yes, they probably get 100 a day, reinforcing positive behaviour.

I also like some of the fish4dogs treats which have sensible daily allowances for training treats :-)

For puppies I will use high value treats mixed in with other things, but all cut or broken up into teeny tiny pieces. Dried sprats break down nicely as do dried duck strips, Treats2Sit4 dehydrated meat (a particular winner with every dog I've known), then the puppy training treats in a tub which are 3mm across and still cut down. I like the jackpot approach as it keeps them guessing as to what they will get. I know a lot of people use the normal kibble, and I'm sure it works with dogs that are easy to train, but my personal theory is that if someone waved a digestive biscuit/ oatcake at you across the playground when you are doing something you might go over if you felt like it anyway. But if there is a nice chocolate on offer, or you know they are the sort to often have something cool in their pocket, you'll leave what you are doing and be right over to find out what you can get.

Treats marketed for cats often come in much smaller sizes, but where they're good quality and primarily meat there's no nutritional differences.

This is a good example - teeny weeny bits of freeze-dried 100% chicken at a very reasonable price https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-natural-chicken-breast-cat-treat-17g/p/0471628

(PS 17g is quite a lot in volume when it's freeze-dried)

I use hot dog sausages. I cut length ways twice and end up with 40 treats from one sausage. Just cut down the portions for meals accordingly

If you ever have fish with skin on, keep the skin and dry out in a very low oven (or just put in the oven when it's turned off after cooking something else). Take out while it's still a little pliable and cut into tiny pieces - I get six out of a piece the size of my little fingernail. Dog is on her Very Best Behaviour for one piece.

Alternatively if you shop at Lidl, their kabanossi come in several meaty varieties and are very easy to chop into tiny pieces because they're so long and thin to start with.

Or grated cheese from a packet - not a handful or even a clump, just one short strand.

Since they gulp it down however big or small it is, I actually think that half the fun for them is in the anticipation, and you might as well chop everything into the tiniest pieces that they still show an interest in. You might be surprised how small that is.

My dog is 1 now but while she was little I just used her biscuits from her meals to teach commands. So I'd feed her half of her breakfast for example and then take the other half out with me on our morning walk to use as rewards.

Then between 5-7months she turned into a fussy beast so I started using the JR Pate on walks/to train because she refused her biscuits. I absolutely love using the Pate, I slice it into rings and then dice it into teeny tiny squares so one roll last ages. I keep a tub in the fridge then freeze the rest and take a small portion out every morning before breakfast.

When she hit seven month she stopped being fussy but I still use the pate on walks.

Yes, you'll get through hundreds of treats. I bought the smallest size kibble in a flavour he wasn't being fed, made tiny dice of cheese, Primula squeezy cheese, and pouches of dog food (good to carry out).

Hot dog is great although it makes your fingers STINK!

I also make my own liver treats which are super lo cal and dogs love them (my dog is not a fish fan annoyingly).

The main thing is to keep your super high value treats just for training, particularly things they find hard.

Akela wholeprey do jars of small pure meat treats which are great for training. I take a bit out of his food if we’ve used a lot. The jars are a bit pricey but there are hundreds of treats in them.

Also Pet Munchie's liver and chicken bites are very small high meat treats - my dog finds them very tasty and there are lots in a bag.

cucumber and carrot bits work for him too especially when I mix a little shredded strong cheddar in the bag.

Ox lung smells revolting but can be cut up with secateurs and the vile smell makes the bits very high value.

Chicken livers roasted plain until quite dry and cut into tiny morsels works too but is a bit messy on the hands.

Mixing it up so they don’t quite know what they’re going to get with the occasional bonus handful reward chucked on the grass for snuffling to keep them interested works for us!

He’s stayed his ideal weight but does need a few grams taken out of his meal on high treat days.

Sorry the ox lung is dry and you can buy it in quite big bags for less than £2