You don’t need to give your dog EXTRA food in order to use food in training, and dogs who are trained with treats aren’t all morbidly obese. This is my boy, for example. He gets rewarded (with food) a million and a half times / day. He is hardly overweight, is he? Especially when you consider that he’s a… castrated… Labrador!
Here’s what you do: just give him part of his daily allowance as a training reward. That simple. Then he just works for a bit of his daily bread.
Here’s how:
1. Weigh how much your dog is allowed per day. You only need to do this once. You can read this on the packaging for your dog’s food.
2. Pour it in a transparent container, and mark the line with a permanent marker.
3. Every morning, apportion that quantity to various containers for the day (e.g. your pouch for going out, a little pot by the door to help with jumping up against guests, etc.). You don’t have to be precise at all.
4. Every evening, re-apportion what you haven’t used into the dog’s food bowl for his last meal of the day.
Sure there’ll be times when the dog needs something more exciting than his standard kibble, but then estimate how much less he gets of his normal food that day.
Refusing to use food in training in fear that it’ll make your dog overweight? Unfortunately, that excuse has officially just been nuked!
by 