Using food as a reward is a great way to teach new behaviours and build reliable obedience.
Using food as a bribe is a great way to ensure your dog doesn’t listen unless you have a treat in your hand.
I see many owners with reactive dogs wave food in the dog’s face to prevent the dog from noticing a trigger and reacting. While this can be a valid management strategy in a particularly tricky situation, it doesn’t help in the long-term. Why? Because if you’re distracting the dog and hoping they don’t notice the trigger, you’re avoiding actually teaching them and practicing what to do when seeing that trigger.
In obedience training many people also do something similar. If you get food out and show it to the dog before asking for obedience commands, then you’re teaching your dog that they only need to listen when there’s food in front of them.
How can you fix this?
Instead of getting food out to bribe your dog, build a strong positive reward marker. Use this marker whenever your dog does a desired behaviour or completes an obedience command. Only after you give the reward marker, reach into your pocket or treat pouch for their food reward. Over time, as your dog becomes more familiar with a behaviour, you can fade out the use of food. Fading out the use of food will never be possible if you rely on bribery.
