Bribing dogs with treats is a bad idea

“Do NOT look Lulu in the eye. Keep your voice low and soft and ignore her barking. Do NOT make arm or hand gestures. You can give her a treat, letting her come to you or drop it for her. She has been doing well with strangers outside but her property is difficult for her.”

I was alarmed by this WhatsApp message from my cousin. I was due to visit. Would I be attacked by Lulu when I walked in? Surely I wouldn’t remember these instructions forwarded from her trainer by then?

My cousin’s family, like my own, have always had dogs. But I was dismayed that, like most modern owners, they had sunk so low as to bribe their pets with food. I was trying to resist the contemporary training-with-food obsession with my own new Jack Russell, Peggy. When I’d attended classes nineteen years earlier, strict Mr. X, who’d trained police dogs, never used titbits. My dog Perry had won the obedience class at a village fête.

For my puppy, I was recommended Joanna. She had twenty-seven years’ experience and was reportedly successful with a neighbor’s labrador. Joanna’s methods, involving many fishy treats, were disconcerting — but, unlike a labrador, Peggy wasn’t food–orientated. (I knew she was intelligent, though, as she had twice turned on the TV remote, once to a program on dingo dogs, once to a wildlife feature. She watched each intently.)

I hadn’t expected treats from someone so fierce and old-school as Joanna. She insisted I hold the lead in my right hand, treats in the left, with Peggy on my left side. Surely the lead, stretched across me, would trip me up? Elderly women were always breaking limbs falling over their dogs. At home, I was to whistle “two or three quick exciting blows” when Peggy was fed, so she would associate that sound with pleasure and rush over. Joanna also ordered me to walk Peggy smartly up and down saying: “Yes, yes, yes, yes!” Other commands were “Sit-down-sit,” “Get back,” “Close,” “Watch me” and “Stay.” And Peggy must never chase a ball — it wasn’t clear why. 

I asked other owners about treats to see how widespread the issue was. Jeremy, an experienced terrier person, never uses food for training. He did admit that after acquiring a wild terrier from a Somerset farm, he had briefly employed a trainer who did. But the dog had quickly learned to obey only for treats and didn’t bother if they weren’t on offer. The trainer, annoyed to be outwitted, advised castration.

My friend Sue’s complex outsize dachshund Hector over-bonded with her husband and was difficult with other dogs. She helpfully sent me four pages of her trainer’s diagnoses and advice, full of daunting phrases: hormone and neurochemical influences; trigger stacking; dog appeasing pheromone. You’d have to do extensive psychotherapy training yourself to understand it all. I noted that Hector is on Fluoxetine, an antidepressant. Again, titbits are part of the training and Sue says Hector is improving.

One woman I used to walk with gave her three dogs treats each time they came when called, sometimes six times during one walk. It reminded me of a shark feeding frenzy and was a bad example to my own dog. Another friend’s dog not only receives treats but has to wear a high-viz tabard on walks which has “I need space” printed on it. Can dogs read this? And can their owners, in time to avoid being attacked, I wondered?

When watching Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly, I felt vindicated about my decision to avoid treats. One enterprising French bulldog, Zac, was better at tackling a football than most humans — one man even climbed a tree to get away — and had cost his owner more than $350 in replacement balls. The experienced trainer, a calm Yorkshireman called Graeme Hall, used intelligence and imagination when his attempt with Zac to substitute food for a desired football didn’t work. He realized that Zac didn’t enjoy the chase as much as chewing the ball, so found him his own chewable football to stop him stealing other people’s. Next we saw Graeme taming two boisterous Weimaraners not with titbits but by putting them out of the room each time they jumped up.

My friend Alice, known for having perfectly behaved dogs, agrees with me. She says she uses food occasionally when training a very young dog and the only way she can get her current dog to do essential physio after a serious operation is with titbits. But these examples are anomalies. She prefers to reward a dog with pats and “Good girl/boy.”

It’s insulting and patronizing to assume a dog has to be bribed with food to obey you. Imagine trying to entice Greyfriars Bobby away from his master’s grave, which he guarded for fourteen years, with a doggy treat.

Peggy, now ten months, does come to the whistle though — three sharp bursts — and I rarely have food with me.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.