Puppy Training Journey #14 Making High Value Treats for Your Dog

Making Puppy Treats for Puppy Training: The Foundation of Effective Motivation

As a professional dog behaviourist and trainer, I’ve learned that the quality and value of rewards used in training can make the difference between success and frustration. In my video “Making Puppy Treats for Puppy Training”, I demonstrate how to create homemade high-value treats that are essential for maintaining your puppy’s focus and motivation throughout their learning journey. This practical approach to reward preparation represents a fundamental aspect of successful puppy training that many owners overlook.

Understanding the Critical Role of High-Value Rewards

As your puppy develops, you can begin to set out to mark and reward all desirable behaviour in and out of the home. Providing high-value treats for your puppy is the perfect way to help ensure that motivation and the reward for the action is kept as high as possible as your puppy learns all of its new skills alongside you.

The concept of “high-value” extends beyond simply offering food to your puppy. It involves understanding what truly motivates your individual dog and ensuring that the reward matches the effort required for the behaviour you’re requesting. In this video, you can see how I set about making my own very high-value treats that are, I think, essential in keeping your young dog focussed upon you in various circumstances.

The Multi-Dog Training Opportunity

You will see again how much I use the recall with young Ruby and, of course, Max and Pip are getting in on the action, as this is a good time to polish and reinforce their attentiveness skills at the same time. This demonstrates an important principle in dog training: every interaction is a training opportunity, regardless of the primary focus of the session.

Working with multiple dogs simultaneously serves several purposes. It allows the older, more experienced dogs to maintain their skills whilst providing excellent examples for the puppy to observe and learn from. The social dynamic also creates a more realistic training environment.

Essential Commands and Progressive Freedom

The Sit, Down, Wait, Stay, Stand and so on are all very useful, but getting your dog to come to you away from ever-increasing distractions once they begin to have more freedom is essential! This progression from basic stationary commands to reliable recall under distraction represents one of the most challenging aspects of puppy training.

As I mentioned at the start of the video, you can use other foods such as chicken, turkey, fishy treats or even slices of vegetables. The key is understanding what truly presses your dog’s buttons! The variety of potential rewards allows you to maintain novelty and high motivation throughout extended training sessions.

Addressing Individual Motivation Styles

I realise that not all dogs are food-driven, and so food might be replaced by a squeaky ball or to lavish your dog with verbal praise and good rub! This recognition of individual differences is crucial for successful training outcomes. Some dogs respond more enthusiastically to play rewards, whilst others thrive on social interaction and physical affection.

Understanding your dog’s primary motivators requires careful observation and experimentation. A dog that shows little interest in food treats might become highly animated when presented with a favourite toy or might respond beautifully to enthusiastic verbal praise combined with physical contact.

Quality Nutrition and Training Success

The kidneys I cooked are from Wyre Forest Community Land Trust and were originally bought for me, but hey, the dogs need good nutrition too. This comment highlights an often-overlooked aspect of training treat preparation: the nutritional value of the rewards we provide.

High-quality protein sources like kidneys offer excellent nutritional benefits whilst serving as extremely high-value training rewards. The strong scent and rich flavour of organ meats make them particularly effective for maintaining attention and motivation during challenging training scenarios.

The Philosophy of Supervised Freedom

The beauty of keeping a dog connected to you with such high-value foods is that they can go off under your supervision, play, interact with other dogs and people and then come back in periodically for the reward and then to go off again as you release them.

This approach represents the ultimate goal of puppy training: creating a dog that can enjoy freedom whilst maintaining a strong connection to their handler. The periodic recall and reward system builds a pattern of checking in that becomes habitual, ensuring safety whilst allowing the dog to explore and socialise.

Practical Implementation Strategies

The process of making homemade treats offers several advantages over commercial alternatives. You control the ingredients, ensuring quality and avoiding potential allergens or additives that might affect your dog’s behaviour or health. The preparation process allows you to create treats of the perfect size and consistency for your training needs.

When preparing treats, consider the size appropriate for your puppy’s mouth and the speed at which you need to deliver rewards during training. Treats should be small enough to be consumed quickly without interrupting the flow of the training session.

Building Reliable Recall Through Strategic Rewards

The recall training demonstrated in this video showcases how high-value treats enable more advanced training scenarios. When a puppy knows that responding to their name or recall command will result in something truly wonderful, they’re far more likely to abandon whatever interesting distraction has captured their attention.

This reliability becomes increasingly important as puppies mature and encounter more complex environments. A dog that has been conditioned to associate recall with exceptional rewards will maintain responsiveness even in highly stimulating situations.

Long-Term Training Success

The investment in creating high-quality, homemade training treats pays dividends throughout your dog’s life. Dogs that have been trained with truly motivating rewards typically maintain better focus, show greater enthusiasm for training sessions, and develop stronger bonds with their handlers.

The skills developed through this type of reward-based training extend far beyond basic obedience. Dogs learn to look to their handlers for guidance, to check in regularly during off-lead activities, and to prioritise their relationship with their human family even when faced with competing interests.

The systematic approach to treat preparation and training demonstrated in this video creates the foundation for a lifetime of successful communication between dog and handler, ensuring that learning remains enjoyable and effective for both parties involved.