What exactly are high-value treats?
High-value treats are not your regular dog biscuits or zukes training treats, they are the treats that your dog will really go crazy for and probably would do anything for you.
When training your dog there will be times when you need something stronger than usual training treats, and these are the situations when high-value treats will come in handy.
My favorite high-value training treats:
Freeze-dried chicken
my go-to choice for training dogs; can be crumbled into the tiniest pieces so works great for smaller dogs or any other dogs; doesn’t usually smell and is dry enough not to grease your hand 🙂
Green tripe
very stinky and worth it, one of the most high-value treats I worked with, can be easily broken into small pieces, or used as crumble when training requires the dog to sniff or to slowly eat
Dried Minnows
Extremely stinky, and not easy to be broken into smaller pieces, so best used on rare occasions and for medium/large dogs; not all dogs love fish taste, but those who do, go crazy for it
Lung bites
dry, not stinky, a bit harder to break into pieces but doable and super favorite among many dogs; in treat value somewhere between tripe and freeze-dried chicken
Real Dog (real.dog)
These are truly gourmet dog treats! Think of such options: bison spleen, pork liver heart, dried calamari etc. They use high quality locally sourced muscle meats, organ meats and seafood treats. They are the least processed and as close to natural for our dogs as possible, also they are fresh: made every month in small batches in San Diego, and delivered fresh directly to you through a subscription service. My dog goes crazy for Real.Dog and it’s definitely her favorite!
They great for your dog enrichment, as well as in terms of nutrition and when you train with them, no dog can resist. If you have an extremely picky dog, a dog who doesn’t take treats when outside (especially reactive dogs) – try a Real Dog.
Favorite training treats: Beef spleen, Pork kidney, Elk Shoulder, Bison lung (all of them are dried pieces that can be broken into smaller based on your dog’s size)
Great chews: Bow ear, Duck feet, Chicken heart (for smaller dogs), Rabbit feet
When do you use high-value dog training treats?
- Training involving hard stuff for a dog: coming when called in highly distracting areas; crate training; teaching a dog to stay alone; working with leash reactivity, fear, or aggression
- Dogs who are hard to train outside because they are too busy sniffing and don’t take any treats;
- Older dogs who don’t find training exciting
- Anxious or scared dogs who often stop taking treats, when stressed
- Or they are just picky eaters who don’t care about most treats; hence are making it hard to find a training treat for them
Don’t use high-value treats as bribes!
Wrong way to use high-value treats
High-value treats are used to train some hard behaviors; hence, they have to be used sparingly. If you use them for everything or give a lot of them to your dog, they gonna lose their value.
You don’t use those treats (or any treats for that matter) to bribe your dog to come to you. Bribe means showing treats to a dog who doesn’t come when called, expecting they will come after seeing treats. This trick usually only works a few times and then doesn’t, it also ruins recall training (come when called cue/command) because now your dog will not come to you unless you have some treats on hand. Recall has to be trained with every dog in a very specific way and high-value treats are used very differently from bribing.
(If you are confused about the difference between using treats as rewards vs food bribes and you want to know how to use it properly in your training, you can always talk to me here.)