I'm looking for advice on healthy treats. Our recall with whistle was absolutely first class, until recently. Still working on it, and just bought the book to help, but I also think he is getting bored of me just giving him his normal food as treats. There are 100s of things I can think of that I know he will love as treats during training, but what healthy treats would you recommend? Are bits of hotdog good, bits of low fat cheese? I have read all sorts.
I use small bits of cheese, hotdogs, chicken, sausage, ham, homemade liver cake and pilchard cake and dried fishskin cubes etc, that Hattie and Charlie love all of these but I do deduct these from their daily meals so that they don't gain any weight It's really useful to mix up your treats so that your dog doesn't know what they are going to get as a reward. I have a scale of rewards, so for any new training I up the treat to chicken or sausage or whatever your dog loves and for daily already proofed training they get a piece of kibble. x
My dog loves all the food I eat (I’m vegetarian). So for short training sessions he gets bits of apple, raw almonds, pieces of seed cracker, cheddar cheese, feta, ricotta, cucumber, chickpeas, brussel sprouts, cooked brocolli (he loves it done with garlic and chilli!), etc etc! I try to keep my treat pouch (that I sometimes take on walks) filled with dried meat treats I buy at the pet shop, although I don’t feed too many as I’m sure they’re highly processed - I tend to buy the ones with ingredients such as: dried lung, vinegar. Ie No added chemicals. If I absolutely have to get him to do something I know he doesn’t really want to do, then I pull out the big guns: butter! He’ll do absolutely anything for butter. Hmmm as I write this I realize I’m describing bribery, not training!!!
We use fish cubes. The dogs adore them and I can give as many as I want without tummy upsets or weight gain. They look expensive, but 1kg is a huge bag. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Challenge-...TF8&qid=1520330130&sr=8-1&keywords=Fish+cubes
Joy's most favourite reward, the one she'll do just about anything for is blue cheese. I always have some with me when we go out but I tend to save it for emergencies like the day she jumped over a wall to say hello to a horse and the day when, having just discovered swimming she started off across a river in flood to get to her friend on the other side. Blue cheese saved the day on both occasions!
I use Kosher Hotdogs(no preservatives or other junk), pieces of apple, and pieces of carrot. But the reality is that any human food excluding chocolate and raisins(which are poisonous) would work for him.
Thanks all. Will look at those, do you make the cubes smaller? they look quite big. Been doing his 10 min training sessions with hotdog bits the last couple of days and he is responding well.
OMG Snowbunny! Thanks so much for this information. There I was thinking I was rewarding Joy, when all along I was poisoning the poor little sweetheart! Luckily for her I am quite mean with the blue cheese. I only give her pieces about the size of a small pea and it's been saved for emergencies only which because on the whole she is quite a cautious little dog don't actually happen very often. However I still feel I am rivalling Moo's monkey-butler in sheer evil-ness and will from now on save the Stilton for us. I only started using it because at the training classes we went to we were advised that high value treats were most effective when strong smelling and smelly cheese is something we usually have in the house. Any advice on Camembert for dogs?
I wouldn't worry too much! I only know this because I happened to look it up when I thought it would be a great reward - as you say, properly smelly! Other cheeses are fine in small amounts, it's the blue mould that causes the potential problem. A hard goats cheese is smelly and easy to cut into small pieces, or my dogs sometimes get an aged Manchego, which is a Spanish sheep's cheese. Most of the time, it's bargain-basement Emmental, though
Parmesan cut into tiny little squares is also good. It has been known that I self-reward with it but then it is very important that the trainer remembers to reward self occasionally
Some of my favourite commercially available treats which I use with my own dog for training and also sometimes with a client's dog are;- https://www.skipperspetproducts.com/fish-shapes-training-treats https://www.millieswolfheart.co.uk/dog-treats/training-treats - love all of these but cut the 'Hearties' in to 4 pieces as they are quite large https://www.amazon.co.uk/Barker-Tra...=1520513976&sr=8-2&keywords=barker+and+barker https://www.amazon.co.uk/Barker-Tra...=1520514010&sr=8-4&keywords=barker+and+barker Barker and Barker come in other flavours but I stick with the liver and fish
