#157 Dog Training Without Treats (The REAL Strategy Explained)

Some people don't want to use treats at all. Others are tired of carrying food everywhere. Both are valid—and both get answered here. This episode breaks down the real system for dog training without treats so your dog listens everywhere, not just when food is in your hand.

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🔥What You'll Learn:

✅ Why treats aren't bribes—and when they actually become one  

✅ Signs your dog is lure dependent (and how to fix it fast)  

✅ How variable reinforcement builds behavior that sticks for life  

✅ The step-by-step system for weaning off treats gradually  

✅ What life rewards are and how to use them every single day  

✅ How to proof commands without food in distracting environments

Both groups searching this topic leave with a real answer. If you think treats are a bribe, we address that head-on. If you're stuck carrying food everywhere, you'll learn the exact system for phasing it out without losing the behavior you've built.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) — The Two Training Groups

(02:15) — The "No Treats" Philosophy: Is Food a Bribe?

(04:30) — The Learning Phase: How Food Bridges the Gap

(08:00) — Moving Beyond Food: Adjusting Reinforcement Schedules

(11:45) — Alternative Rewards & Classical Conditioning

(15:15) — Summary: Trusting the Strategic Process

(17:30) — Implementing Corrections & Episode Outro

👀 WATCH NEXT: 

📺 Dog Body Language: https://youtu.be/GeFzkht6mzw?si=eUKlU9ZYaPLpZoLJ

📺 Socializing Reactive Dog: https://youtu.be/bo66a0S8k1M?si=knfJM4vryKwhY7SX

📺 E Collar for Beginners: https://youtu.be/BJYHZEkNTnQ?si=PaaK_bltBh6cjjb6

#CanineRevolution #DogTraining #DogTrainingWithoutTreats 

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Pack Talk Podcast by Canine Revolution Dog Training

Video versions of podcasts on the Pack Talk Podcast and Canine Revolution Dog Training YouTube channel

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Pac Talk Podcast, episode 157. Today we're talking about dog training without treats. I'm going to give you the real strategy on how to do this. And uh this episode is for two groups of people. Group number one is the type of person that thinks that treats are a bribe and you want your dog to listen to you because you said so. So stick around because I got some good information for you. And the second group of people is the people who are training with food. They've been training with food for a while. It is working, but they're getting tired of carrying food everywhere you go, and you don't know how to get off of the food. This episode's going to be for you too. So there's basically two groups of people, two problems, one answer. So I'm going to get right into it. But before I do, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you watch on YouTube, whether you listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, wherever you listen to, please take a minute if we've brought in any value to you. Take a minute and like the podcast if you can. Leave a review on your podcast platform if you can, because that really helps us spread the word and help reach other people. And we really appreciate that, right? And we appreciate you and being here. So with that being said, I've got my notes to go through, make sure I'm hitting all the major topics. But first of all, group number one, I don't want to use treats at all. I want my dog to listen because I said so. Food feels like a bribe. This is a philosophy that a lot of people have. One of uh the trainers that I used to uh train with 10 or more years ago had this philosophy, and uh we'll talk about it here in just a second. Group number two, I'm training with food, it's working, I can't do this forever. When can I stop carrying treats everywhere? This is a process, right? So one is a philosophy, I don't want to train with food. Food is a bribe. Two, I'm training with food, it's working, but I don't know how to get off the food. That's a process. So we're gonna go through both of those, right? But I'm gonna start with the person who doesn't want to use treats at all. They think that treats are a bribe, right? So let's let's let's talk about it. Are treats really a bribe? And uh that's it depends on how you use it. Let's just say that. Let's start with that. It depends on how you use it, because if you take a piece of food out and you're like, you know, showing it to your dog, which, you know, don't get me wrong, there is a part of training where we have to do that. It's called luring, which I'll talk about. Um, but you know, bribe is basically you're showing them you got this food just to make them do it, and you keep doing that, right? There's no science to it, you're just trying to get them to do it. So, how many times have you been to your friend's house? They have their dog, they take out the piece of food, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, right? They're trying to bribe their dog. There's no science or you know, learning theory applied to that specific manner, right? The problem isn't the food itself, the problem is how and when the food is used, right? So let's just uh settle that real quick. Also, what food actually does in the learning phase. Well, what we need to understand, we need to have like a big picture overview of how we're gonna use food in our dog's training. We use it to help teach our dog, we use it to help bridge the gap because the dog is a non-verbal being. You as a human are a verbal being. We have to bridge that gap. You could tell your dog to sit, right? And in your head, you know what that means. For a human that's been, you know, learned from other humans, they know what it means, but a dog has no idea what you're talking about. So, how are you gonna bridge that gap? Your expectation for the dog to sit, you know, to getting the dog to actually do that. Well, food helps us do that, right? We can take a food lure. Well, there's there's multiple ways to train a dog, right? The two main ways are gonna be free shaping and luring. Free shaping is when the dog performs behavior, you reward it for doing that behavior. So, for example, in your head, you want the dog to sit, or maybe you you even say sit. You say sit, your dog's kind of sitting there staring at you, staring at you, staring at you, then out of nowhere it just decides to sit down. That's called a free shape. Then you say good, you reward it, that's free shaping that behavior. You didn't show the dog anything, you just stood there and you rewarded it for actually sitting. The other way would be the lure method, where you take a piece of food, you show it to your dog's nose, you you move their nose with the food into a sit position, the dog sits, you say good, you give them the food, right? That's the lure method. The other method without food at all is just to take a leash and yank and crank the dog until they sit, right? Or another method that people do is uh e-collar. You know, they take the e-collar, they turn it on. The the dog's trying to figure out what to do, what to do, it feels this sensation, it eventually sits, then the e-collar it gets turned off, right? So the leash, yank and crank, and the e-collar method are going to be aversive training styles, not advised, not ideal. But when you either free shape or lure, those are the ideal ways to train. Because think about it, if you're in a classroom, right, you're sitting at a table, and someone else is sitting across the table and they have a goal, they want you to pick up a certain item on the table. Let's say it's a red pencil, and there's all kinds of color pencils all over the table, but there's only, you know, let's just say there's all kinds of colors pencils all over the table, but they want you to pick up a red pencil. And so let's just take the uh the Yank and Crank method, for example. This person that's sitting across the table would apply some kind of pressure to you, or if you didn't grab a red pencil, they they pressure you, right? E-collar method, they basically turn on the stimulation. You're you're you don't know how to turn it off. So what do you do? You just start grabbing stuff on the table, and uh, you know, because you grab a handful of pencils that are all different colors, even a red one included, they're not gonna turn it off. So now you're stressed, right? Versus a food piece of food, if we're doing free shaping, free shaping, you're just picking up stuff on the table, and then you pick up the red one, they say good. You're like, oh shit, good. Now they give you an MM, right? Good. You're oh, I like MMs, right? Especially if you're trainer Chris. If you know trainer Chris at Canon Revolution, he loves MMs. Actually, Skittles are his favorite, so let's talk about Skittles. So, you know, Chris picks up the red pencil, the person gives him a Skittle. Chris will keep picking up that red pencil, right? Then the person will keep giving him Skittles, right? So he's building that behavior. The other way, the lure method would be they put a Skittle right next to the red pencil. So Chris looks at it, he's like, Oh, there's a Skittle. Oh, there's a red pencil. Let me let me grab that Skittle, eat that Skittle, right? And so now he's he's gotten close to the red pencil. They put another Skittle close to the red pencil again. They do that multiple times, then they stop putting Skittles next to it, so he just picks up the red pencil, then they give him another Skittle, right? So that's basically how the lure method would work from a learning phase, just breaking it, breaking it down as simple as possible. So uh just keep that in mind, right? So if you're against using food, you need to think of it as a bridge, bridge the gap between a verbal uh being, which is a human, and a non-verbal being, a dog, right? That helps you bridge the gap to teach your dog, and I'll explain exactly how uh to use food systematically and then get rid of it in your training in just a second. But first, I want to talk about the people that are stuck on food, they've been using food, they're stuck on food, right? They can't get off of food. And what's happened there is you've made a dependence on the food, right? You don't know how to adjust your reinforcement schedules. A reinforcement schedule is how often you reward a behavior. So let's just take a sit, for example. If you reward your dog every time they sit forever, you know, they get used to that and they won't sit if you don't reward them. So what you do is you use food to reward a behavior only as many times as you need to for the dog to get that conceptual, that concept of behavior down. Then you're gonna start removing the food uh from the training by by basically rewarding every other repetition, then every third repetition, then every fifth repetition, right? So you're gonna start bridging the gap between repetitions with the food, all right? Um, so the people that are stuck on food, they don't understand that concept. And then the people that are against food, they are they are failing to have a bridge. So, how do we actually you know train our dog systematically, uh scientifically, where they're going to enjoy training, we are going to enjoy training with our goal of using little food as time goes on. All right, so let's talk scientifically how we're gonna change up these reinforcement schedules as our dog progresses. So let's say we're teaching our dog to sit, for example. What we're gonna do is we're gonna lure. If you're doing a lure method, if you're doing a free shaping method, it's the same way. You're just gonna wait for your dog to perform the behavior. But if you're gonna lure, you lure the dog into a sit, the dog sits, you say good, you reward, do that repetitiously, right? Once the dog understands the concept of that behavior, then what you're gonna do is start fading your rewards in training. What that means is instead of rewarding every repetition, you're gonna reward every few repetitions, every couple repetitions, maybe every other repetition, maybe every third repetition, you know, it's just gonna depend on you and your dog in particular, but you have to push, you have to increase the criteria for the behavior in order to access the reward. So let's say you're getting rid of the lure, you can move your hand in the same motion as if you had a lure, but just don't have any food in it. And your dog should follow that, right? And you can add other signals to help you fade out a lure as well. You can add in a leash signal, right? You can add in a slight touch signal, but every signal that you add into the equation for that particular behavior, you're gonna have to fade out that signal as time goes on as well. So think about that. If you're adding in signals for your dog to perform a behavior, you have to get rid of those signals as time goes on. Now, with that being said, once you've uh faded it out to every couple of repetitions, then you're gonna push. You want to keep pushing and increasing the criteria in order to access the reward until you hit a random, what's called a random reinforcement schedule. What that means is your dog gets a reward randomly for doing the behavior when requested, right? That could be a sit, you know. You say, you know, Fido sit, your dog sits, good. You say good, but you don't reward them, right? And then you go about your business. The next time you say sit, fido sit, they sit, good. You don't reward them. You know, you do that until there is a time where you want to reward them. So think about it that way. You're starting off with food rewards, ideally on a continuous reinforcement schedule where you're rewarding very frequently for a behavior, and then as time goes on, you're fading the reward schedule until you don't need rewards anymore routinely. That's when you're on a random reinforcement schedule, and that is your maintenance, your long-term reinforcement. Now, something else to think about. You don't just have to use food rewards to reinforce. I do recommend using food rewards to teach behaviors, right? Like sitting, downing, staying, uh, place commands, come commands, all this kind of stuff. Use food rewards for that. But as time goes on, you're fading out your food rewards until you're on a random reinforcement schedule. And then I want you to think about what are other ways I could reinforce my dog without food. Let's let's give you some examples. It could be petting, touching your dog, physical touch. It could be life, right? Going outside, going for a walk, going potty, the pot, the relief of potty that can feel good to a dog, that can be a reinforcement. It could be playing with a toy, you know, that could be reinforcing to your dog. So whatever it is that you could use to reinforce your dog, utilize that, right? So, for example, let's say you want to use physical contact, touch petting as a reward for your dog, but maybe your dog doesn't see it the same way they see food. Maybe you can tell your dog it's really excited when you have a food reward, and then if you're using physical touch, your dog is not as excited. That's when you could classically condition the physical touch to equal food in your dog's brain. I'm getting kind of sciencey here, so let me know if I'm going too deep in the weeds. If you're watching on YouTube or on Spotify, these platforms have comments, you can leave me a comment. If you're watching on Apple, I don't think there's comments there, but you can hop over to YouTube and leave me a comment if I'm getting too sciencey in this particular uh situation. So classical conditioning, you can classically condition your physical touch to equal the food. How do you do that? Whatever you want to equal something else has to come before the other thing with a slight pause in between. So in this case, I want to uh I want the physical contact to equal the food reward. Before I reward my dog with food, I would have to pet them. So I would say good, pause, pet with my hand, right? Pause, food. Good, pause, pet, it pause, food. That sequence, if done properly over time, your physical contact would equal food to the dog through classical conditioning. So think about it like that. You can use that to your advantage in a variety of situations as you go to eliminate food in your training. But I do recommend long-term preserving random reinforcement with food for eye contact in particular and engagement, because this is the most important thing in our training: engagement relationship eye contact. Because when you're out in the world and you see a distraction, you want your dog to pay attention to you versus that distraction. That's what eye contact does. So even if you stop using food for your obedience training, for example, I would still recommend doing it routinely, not routinely, regularly, on a random reinforcement schedule for eye contact in particular. So again, we train our dog with the food so that we can, you know, teach them, we can bridge the gap between verbal and nonverbal being. We use the lures, we use the free shaping, we use continuous reinforcement scheduling, rewarding very frequently to enhance those behaviors. Now, as those behaviors get very comfortable with the dog, then we're going to shift that reinforcement schedule slowly. We're fading the reward, we're getting rid of the reward, we're shifting that reinforcement schedule until we get to a random reinforcement schedule. And when we're on a random reinforcement schedule, you basically reward whenever you see fit, right? And think of it like a slot machine. You know how when you play a slot machine, or if you know the concept of a slot machine, they pull the lever, you never know when you're getting something, right? So that makes people want to do it even more because one time they hit that jackpot, right? Then they win a lot, and then they're like, I love slot machines, I'm gonna keep playing. Same thing with this uh random reinforcement. Your dog never knows when the reward is coming. So they're playing that slot machine with you, right? Um, but we also don't want our dog to be doing it for the food itself. We want them to find the behavior reinforcing, right? So if you're, you know, you you you sit, for example, you have your dog sit, you say good, then you reward. Pretty soon through classical conditioning, these behaviors are going to feel reinforcing, especially if you're fading out your food very strategically, right? Um, so think about your training like that. You're starting off using food to bridge the gap. Once the behavior is uh, you know, the concept of the behavior is down, you start fading out your food, you're getting rid of your food slowly by increasing the number of repetitions between the food rewards themselves, you're increasing the criteria for the behavior. Then finally you get to that random reinforcement schedule where you're randomly rewarding your dog whenever you see fit, and then you could uh, and even through this process, you can classically condition other things like petting, for example, petting, uh, to equal the food, which makes the petting as reinforcing as the food. You can make the behavior itself, the sit, the down, whatever, reinforcing to the dog as well, right? So think about it that way. Think about it strategically. Don't try to skip this stuff, don't rush the process, trust the process, all right? Um, maybe on another topic we can talk about accountability when you should uh implement corrections in training. Let me know in the comments if you want me to cover that because there is a strategic way to implement corrections and training where your dog understands it enough, it's not really shocking your dog, it's not stressing your dog, but you're teaching it to them systematically so that they understand what to do when they feel that correction, right? And even though the correction, like let's just take a leash correction or or a uh e-collar correction, for example, right? We do want that to limit the dog's uh behavior that you know uh resulted in the correction. For example, let's say you're walking down the street and they react at something that they shouldn't be reacting at. You say no, you pop on the leash, they stop reacting, they come back to you, right? That is an effective correction. Uh the purpose of a correction is to change behavior, right? But we also want our dog to interpret that correction appropriately. We want it to be a good signal to them so that they know when they've done uh something that's outside of our rules, boundaries, expectations. So let me know if you want me to deep dive on the corrections. Today I just wanted to cover real quick the food, right? How do we uh get rid of food in our training? How do we train without food? You use the food as a bridge and then you get rid of it later, right? So let me know if you guys have questions. As always, if you need help, you can reach out to us, canine revolution dogtraining.com. We've got links down in the description below to where you can contact our team for a discovery call, for a consultation, for a virtual coaching. We've got a link to our free six-step uh training guide down in the link in the description below as well. We've also got links down below to the book that I wrote, which is the ultimate lease training manual, which talks about this in greater detail as well. And we've got links to the I Love Dogs Coloring book. Uh, all those are available on Amazon. All of our affiliates are down the links. You can find them in the description down below. We only work with people that are going to bring actual benefit to you. And of course, if you guys have any questions at all, drop them in the comments. Please leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. And until next time, this is Pac Talk Podcast out.