As positive reinforcement during combat training, yes.

Rarely, and never in response to begging.

Yes, to te dog treats…NO to the food!!! Then again, my dogs were taught NOT to beg from day one so I don’t have a problem with them begging!!! I make my own treats so I know what’s in them.

One of my dogs that passed about 35 years ago knew that IF he behaved & didn’t beg that he’d be rewarded with all the leftovers off the table. IF he begged he received nothing.IF I got busy & forget to put tyhe leftovers in his bowl, the most pushy thing he ever did was to lay his head in my lap to continue waiting.

I even trained my ats that begging didn’t work with me!!! I refuse to be held hostage by a pet!!!

Yep. They are great for bonding and for advanced (force-free) behaviour modification or trick training. Begging may be taught or reinforced if your timing is off, but not through the process of handing out treats alone. You want to treat when your dog is doing things you like – such as lying down calmly instead of begging.

No to what food @LadyMarissa?

@Dutchess_III Do you put his McDonald hamburgers in a bowl?

No. We were at a dog park. I threw them in the grass.

I don’t hand feed human food to my pets. Food goes in their bowl when I feel like putting it there & ONLY IF they don’t beg. I give them treats by hand when they’ve been good. My babies are 11 & 12 y/o so I don’t feed them a lot of human food. The females will lose her school girl figure very easy & I don’t feel that human food is that good for them!!! They’re getting old & crippled so not as much exercise as they used to get. I also don’t eat at home as much as I used to so there’s not as much human food to share as there used to be!!!

OK. I have changed my mind a little. I will concede to giving him treats in exchange for good behavior.
Rick bought some treats so I pulled them out. It’s Alpo T Bonz and it is ridiculous. The advertising targets humans.
Anyway, I got one out and cut it up in 6ths, so he has to do 6 good things to wind up with a whole treat.

I give my dog a treat when she comes in when I call her. Which is usually if she is outside barking. She thought she had me when she would run outside and bark a couple of times and run back in and stand under the treat jar. Um, no, I have to call you in while you are for real barking, not fake barking.

Sure. Why not? I enjoy sometimes giving them treats because we are all warm and fuzzy buddies. And still for training sometimes.

LOL @chyna! Loves me some smart dogs!

HEY For some odd reason, I regarded myself as treat enough for my dogs when we had them. Same with the cat. They cooperated fully in enforcing the delusion that they adored me. Go figure! They were spoiled rotten, and I’m certain suffered premature deaths from overindulgence in the same things that will kill me. The poor cat’s kidneys were
Probably felled by an excess of tuna & ice cream.

We had a dog who cheerfully allowed us to believe we were Alpha in her pack. I miss Dakota. That was one smart, good natured, protective puppers.

You know, I had no idea how fond I was of those animals until they left. I believe it is the reason I now dote so on my wife. I’ve warned her that a new cat or dog might divert my attention from all those boxes of Sees. And we haven’t had another dog or cat since the big grey kitty who had his own theme song. It’s sung to the tune of Camptown races. And the “doo dah” part was an octave lower to match his baritone meow. Ready? The big grey kitty sings dis song “feed me feed me”

They do grab hold of your heart, don’t they. The first dog I have had to put down because she was old and failing, my Snuffy, was the hardest thing I have ever done.

I defer to @longgone as the dog expert here. When I was training Frodo, the trainer certainly had me use small high end treats as rewards; not people food or food from the table. Pills were usually administered in a small chunk of cheese.

I trained Snuffy with Cheerios.

Dakota was so smart she caught on to the “hide the pill” trick. She’d eat what ever and extract the pill and spit it out!
Finally hit on dissolving it and mashing it into a bit of canned food.

Very rarely but yes.

Well, it took two days but I finally got him to peacefully accept me putting an old collar on him. He’s growing so freaking fast that I can’t pick him up to take him to the back door when he has an accident. I needed something to hold on to while I “lead” him to the door. I just didn’t want to wrestle him down and forcefully put his collar on. I wanted him to simply accept it, and he finally did.
It’s Snuffy’s old leather collar. Soon he’ll graduate to Dakota’s bigger collar.
Phase 2…Walking On A Leash.

PS…it looks like he didn’t have any “accidents” last night. Wish I could “catch” him crappin’ in the yard so I could give him treats and tell him what a good boy he is.

Maybe too many too often. Working on reducing it.

I need to “catch” him in the act. I can’t give a him a reward 20 minutes after he did the good thing, for the same reason you can’t give a toddler time out 20 minutes after they did the bad thing.

He’s trying to trick me @chyna! He goes to the door, taps to go out, when I get up to open it he circles back around to my chair and looks up at me expectantly. It’s really interesting, since I had him trained to let me know when he wanted out before I started giving him treats (just yesterday.) I thinks are aclickin’.

They learn quickly how to train us humans!

Cutting treats up is a good idea. Like @janbb said, multiple small treats work best because they translate to lots of repetition without hyper-fast weight gain.

Collars are really unsafe. They are as harmful to a dog as they would be to a toddler. Probably more so, as most dogs move with more force than the average toddler – and a dog’s skin is thinner, too.

I know. I don’t normally have collars on my dogs for that reason but some times they’re necessary. I want him to

Sorry…lost it.

I want him to not fight me about wearing it.
I’m also in the process of leash training. He does NOT like the leash!

Why would a collar ever be necessary?

So that they are not mistaken for strays, abducted by a dog catcher, then summarily euthanised?

@ragingloli A harness works perfectly for that purpose. Safer, and even more visible.

When we take him to the vet or to family occassions or to the lake or on a walk.

I’ll post some pics of Dutchess and Dakota. They almost never had collars on.

@Dutchess_III I agree that dogs sometimes need to be leashed, I just don’t see why the leash has to be attached at their neck. Do you not like harnesses?

Do harnesses require a hand on the harness at all times or can you attach a lead?

@Dutchess_lll You can most certainly attach a lead.

I’ll look into one then.

@ragingloli around here they don’t summarily euthanised untagged dogs. Dutchess and Dakota had a spell where they were getting picked up every other month. Neither ever had a collar on.

Today I am teaching him to lay down.

What is with the crazy variation in harness prices? From $17 to $70!