What Should You Be Thanking Your Dog With?
What Should You Be Thanking Your Dog With?
Following on from my previous blog post about how we can change the thinking on treating our dogs, it’s also important to think about what we thank our dogs with.
When it comes to food and nutrition in the dog world, it’s easy to get bogged down in various different types of food – and that’s not what we’re here to think about! (Save that 20 page post blog for another day.)
If a training session or period is going to involve a substantial amount of thanks (treats) – It’s important that those thanks tick a few boxes;
1. Is it actually what your dog wants?
It’s very easy to assume that dogs will love all packets of foods labelled “Treats”. Wrong! There’s some right fussy buggers out there! If you’re doing does something you’ve asked for make sure you’re thanking them with something they genuinely enjoy – otherwise they may stop offering it. (Rarely is a “Good Boy/Girl” and a pat on the head a genuinely rewarding experience for a dog)
2. Is it good for your dog?
We all want our dogs to be as healthy as possible right? Some of the training treats you’ll find in shops will be filled with unhealthy fillers that only serve to cause issues in the future. Make sure you’re sticking to high meat content food of a decent quality (Providing that’s appropriate to your individual dogs diet)
Let’s look at it bluntly folks, you can feed your dog hotdog sausages regularly to say thank you, but don’t be surprised about what comes out the back end!
Finding out what your dog loves in particular can be really helpful for knowing what will work better to motivate them. Lay out individual pieces of what you know your dog loves and see which one they pick first every time. Divide your “treats” into a hierarchy, saving the special ones for highly demanding training (Like with lots of distractions). Consider your “treats” to be like currency – a boring old low meat content, low flavour treat might be £20 to your dog. A 100% cube of meat is more like £100!
I’m not here to suggest you go out and spend a fortune on treats (Unless you want to of course, in which case – ring me immediately!). Cooking up your own meat can be an extremely cost effective way to yield a lot of high value food. But there will always be those among us that want the convenience (Me included) which is why I exclusively stock high quality, healthy training foods with 100% meat. Included in the range are novel proteins for dogs with allergies, sensitivities or dietary issues. For example: Kangaroo, Rabbit, Goat, Ostrich and much more!
So look at what you’ve got in that cupboard and ask yourself… “Am I just feeding my dog what a big food company has convinced me they’ll like? Or am I picking what MY dog likes?”
If you’re interested in my range of treats and chews, get in touch – I regularly move around Sutton and make drop offs to customers. Similarly you can catch me at the monthly Artisan Market at Buzzard’s Valley.