This is the puppy training podcast, episode number 80, The Power of Play.

This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning as you train your own dog from home.

And I'm here to help you every step of the way.

This is the puppy training podcast, and I'm your host, Amy Jensen.

Hello, thanks you guys for listening today.

I hope you are having a great week.

Today, I want to discuss the power of play and how we can use it as a motivator for our dogs.

So Baxter is currently in his adolescent phase of life.

Are there any others out there who can relate with me? Yeah, I know, adolescence, right? So fun.

It can be fun, I know, but it can also be trying. And over the past week, I have been thinking a lot

about how I can help him succeed.

How can I set him up for success? What kinds of little things can I do to make this phase of life

better? So what things am I doing to help motivate him to make good choices? Play came to mind

and the power behind making me more rewarding than the environment or a toy more fun than a leaf.

So depending on where you live, leaves are blowing and falling all around, which really do create tough distractions to compete with.

While I enjoy the beauty for sure, I've had to be more creative in how I get Baxter's attention. Let's back up a bit and review

how dogs think first. Dogs do something if it is worth it to them. If it brings them no benefit,

they most likely won't do it or they'll stop doing it. It's very powerful to use this knowledge

when we're training a dog and if we want to, say, get rid of a behavior. Now, we can teach a dog good

behavior by rewarding things that the dog does that we like. So make those things worth it to our dog,

and they'll most likely do it again. Oftentimes we use food to pay our dogs for doing good things.

Why? Because dogs need to eat, and it acts as a powerful motivator to do desirable

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