You are listening to your new puppies podcast. Starting you and your dog off on the right paw. Here's your

host Debbie Salento. Hello and welcome to episode 54 of your new puppies podcast. I'm Debbie and today we are going to talk

about how to use treats. So I wanted to do this because sometimes positive trainers get a bad rap because the thought is we come we stuff your dog full of treats and say that they're trained.

Which isn't completely true.

Yes, we use a lot of treats, but there's a specific reason behind it.

And I think what ends up happening is that, you know, once we leave your house or you leave our

class, you know, we almost miss the step of how do we stop using the treats once our dog knows the behavior.

So that's why I wanted to do this here.

So specifically what I'm going to talk about is why we use treats, you know, what's the function of them,

when we use high value versus lower value treats because I do talk about that a lot and that is important because if we always

used high-value treats then they would lose their value and there is a

an important function to them and how to come away from them like how and when do we know to stop

giving them the treats and just expect them to do the behavior for us.

Okay so first why do we use treats?

And the simple answer is that because our dogs are motivated by them.

The vast majority of dogs are motivated by them. The vast majority of dogs are motivated by food. And I know there's a lot of non-food

motivated dogs out there and there are some things that you can do. Most of the time it's just about finding that food

that is motivating for them. And I'll talk about that more when I talk about high value versus low value treats.

So whenever we're teaching our dog something new, which is usually when your trainer is walking

into your home, you're walking into class or maybe

you're even just watching a YouTube video you know the behavior is brand new you

know whether it's we want to teach them a formal skill like obedience like sit or we want to stop them from barking or you know maybe they're uncomfortable with cars or trucks on a walk and we want to change their association.

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