How To Use Food Effectively While Training Your Dog

Food, treats, or "lures" all mean basically the same thing:  Tiny (pea-sized) pieces of whatever your puppy will pay attention to in a given environment. 

You may have great success with plain dry dog food in every situation.  However, if your puppy needs a little more motivation when you start working in more distracting places, mix in tiny pieces of treats at a ratio of about 4:1 food:treats.  I recommend that you make this mix in large batches and keep it in an airtight container in the fridge. 

Effective training treats have a few things in common:

• They're soft

• They're stinky (in a good dog way, of course)

• They're easily cut, broken or crumbled into tiny pieces

• They're different from week to week (or day to day if necessary).  Variety is the spice of life for dogs too.

The most effective kind of treats to mix into your dog's food/treat batches are usually cold cuts or hot dogs (yes, human food!), chicken, turkey, tuna, or most softer dog treats like fake bacon, fake meat, fake jerky, or any soft dog treat.  Freeze-dried liver also works well because it's easy to cut with scissors into dry dog food, it gets powdery and coats each piece of kibble (so your dog thinks it's all liver), and it's dry (not wet & mushy)  in your hand or pocket.  You can buy freeze-dried liver at your local pet store.

You can find information about Food Calculation here.