Doxie News Dachshund Blog

Kody and I have been using our trainer's methods for over a month now and the results are really showing. Yesterday a couple of facts became clear:

• Kody is not that motivated by chicken much at this point.
• In spite of that, I can walk him peacefully around the block and accomplish most of my goals without treats at this point.
• When I really need treats, though, the chicken isn't going to cut it.

Since I don't need treats except when I really need them, today I decided to make a change. I decided to use hot dogs, but only to treat when I needed to improve something and know exactly how to do it. Basically, I didn't expect to give out many treats.

The walk started off good from the beginning, because when you've got a treat like hot dogs that your dog doesn't get very often, they really try to please you. I resisted the urge to give a treat for the wonderful things he was doing and tried to save them only for the important stuff. Here is what I treated for today. All of these also involved a click at the appropriate time for training.

• Kody waited patiently at the bottom of the stairs for me.
• To get Kody to wait at one of the first points in out walk where he usually goes too fast.
• I gave one reinforcing treat when Kody was walking right next to me. While I wasn't planning on doing that anymore, I wanted to at least do it once at the beginning of the walk.
• I gave a treat when a man walked by.
• I gave a treat after Kody pooped so to reinforce that coming to me is better than barking after pooping.
• I gave a treat when another man walked by when Kody was just about to approach him to sniff him.
• I gave a treat when two bikes rode by.
• I gave him a treat during a part of our walk where he often tries to pull.
• I gave a treat after he returned to me after sniffing something at the end of the leash. This one didn't involve a click.
• I gave him a treat at an important part of our walk where we go through a gate and he can sometimes be a little out of control there.
• I gave him a treat at the top of some stairs after he had waited to go up and where he usually goes ahead to fast.
• I gave him a treat at a point where we're almost home and he gets excited and goes a little too fast.
• I gave him one for waiting at the top of some other stairs.
• I gave him a final treat when we were done with the walk as tradition dictates.

That may seem like a lot of treats, but that was all there was for the whole walk. It used up about an eighth of a hot dog. That's not very much, is it?

Kody did one thing that I knew he was going to when I used hot dogs. A couple of times when he hadn't had a treat in a while he barked at nothing to try to create a scenario where I would end up giving him a treat. I just walked back and forth with him until he calmed down. I knew what he was doing.

It's funny to hear me say that when I used to treat him to reward quiet after barking. However, I don't take that back. For where we were at the time, treating for quiet following barking was the right thing to do for our skill level.

What I realized about today was that we were operating at a very high level of training, at least compared to our past. I'm going to continue walking with the hot dogs for a bit and giving them only when needed so they stay fresh and interesting. Then we can switch back to chicken and it will stay interesting longer because we'll use it less.

It's weird to hear myself saying, "less treats", but I'm still super pro-treat, I just need to do what I need to keep the interesting treats interesting so we can work on more advanced stuff. If I give treats for everything I'd like to, Kody will get bored with them. It's also a very new experience where Kody is pretty much doing something I think is great at any given moment. It's hard to resist the urge to treat when I'm so thankful for these new behaviors.