One of the concerns people often have is how to stop using treats or how to avoid having a dog which stares and whines/barks at you for more – or whether you have to have treats forever!

• Remember treats are used as a reinforcer – something the dog likes which encourage a specific behaviour to happen again. Anything you dog enjoys can be used to reinforce behaviour so this could be play with you, chasing a ball, playing tug, sniffing, chasing you/squirrel in a tree, saying hi to someone, play time with a dog, having a cuddle with you – literally anything they like. Rather than trying to get rid of things that the dogs considers reinforcing, try just switching them up so you have a wide range of things you can draw on. If you think about it, we view pay for working in this way!
• You can move to random reinforcement. This means you dont pay every time but just the responses which are the best – maybe the dog looks back at you more quickly that time, or recalls faster – massively reinforce these. You can use low value reinforcers for lesser responses. The risk of no reinforcement for some dogs is that this causes frustration which puts blocks in their learning

Dogs which stare, whine, bark, jump at you, chew the lead, grab your clothes etc are demonstrating frustration… they were anticipating something good (dopamine is released in the brain), the good thing doesn’t happen (sudden drop in dopamine) resulting in behaviour evidencing this. Its not chosen behaviour under conscious control.

Try these things instead:

• Put your treats/toys etc on the side away from you – use your marker word/clicker to show that the behaviour is what you were looking for and then walk to the treats/toys and get one to pass to the dog. This builds in not watching your hands (as they are holding food/toys) or anticipating it coming immediately as you step over and get the treat/toy thus building a small gap in time
• Don’t feed your puppy when they sit/stand and stare at you – this inadvertently teaches them that the position they are in + staring is the answer. Failing to reinforce this builds frustration
• Teach games like blanket which build frustration tolerance. Life is full of opportunities which are not always met, so long term teaching for frustration tolerance is time well spent