Food Reinforcers and Health: Tips for Using Food in Training without Overfeeding

Food treats are a great training tool. However, many puppy owners are concerned that using food in training can cause overeating. This concern is a valid one; your puppy can’t have too much food, or it will gain weight. So, what should owners do? Thankfully, you can use food without your puppy overeating and gaining weight. Below are a few important tips to help your use of food treats remain healthy.

Important Tips for Using Food Treats

1. Depending on your puppy’s size and weight, it has a certain amount of calories it should eat daily. Ask your vet for the number of calories your puppy should eat each day. Both meals and treats should mostly be able to fit within that number. You can eyeball this; you don’t have to get super detailed unless your puppy has health needs and your vet has instructed you to watch its diet closely. To keep the calorie count at the healthy limit, compensate your puppy’s meals for how many treats it receives. However, make sure your puppy gets all its needed nutrients. It is often best to include some of your puppy’s meals in treats rather than feeding less of the meal in total.

2. You can use healthy treats. Single-ingredient treats are the best! Many brands of treats these days only contain one to three ingredients that most puppies love, so finding healthy treats is a lot easier than it used to be.

3. Your puppy can eat human food. Depending on the breed (e.g., Labradoodles don’t do well with chicken), you can use unseasoned cooked chicken, beef, salmon, cheese, broccoli (if your puppy will work for it), and more. Make sure you check with your vet to ensure your puppy is not getting too much of one thing, and again, ensure you do not overfeed.

4. If your puppy will work for it, you can use kibble as a reinforcer. If this is the case, you can train at mealtime, use half of the meal for training, and then feed the rest in a bowl.

5. You do not need a ton of treats per training session. Treats should be cut into small pieces the size of a pea. In a standard low-distraction training session, you can feed one to two treats per repetition and the occasional jackpot for breakthroughs (a jackpot is usually five to seven treats).

6. You can mix other forms of reinforcement with food if your puppy likes something else more or equally. Some puppies love play as a reinforcer. Others love affection. You can also gradually switch from food to play as the reinforcer once your puppy fully knows the behavior and it has been proofed. You can also use the opportunity to do something they love as a reinforcer. Some examples are the opportunity to go outside, the opportunity to sniff something new, the opportunity to run free, etc.

Closing Thoughts

Reinforcement is more than just food. Be creative and safe and know that the overall point is to reinforce your puppy. However, remember that it is your puppy who decides what is reinforcing. Check with your puppy and test if the reinforcer is actually reinforcing. If the frequency of the behavior increases, it is being reinforced by something. However, ask yourself if your reinforcer is reinforcing the behavior or something else?

If you want help determining what is reinforcing unwanted behaviors, schedule a training session here!

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