Do Dogs Work for Praise and Affection?
Learn why it’s important to use food rewards to train your dog
Jolanta Benal, CPDT-KA, CBCC-KA
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Do Dogs Work for Praise and Affection?
Most of my clients are comfortable using food rewards with their dogs, but some aren’t, and a fair number have wistful feelings about it. Wouldn’t it be nice if your dog worked for you instead of some reward? I think this problem disappears if we look closely at the situation.
Our Dogs Love Us, So Why Isn’t Praise Enough?
We have every reason to believe our dogs love us. Although their brains are simpler and smaller than ours, the brain structures and neurochemicals that govern emotion are similar. Dogs’ behavior toward us sure looks like attachment: they greet us eagerly when we come home, for instance. And even a dog who hasn’t been taught to come when called will usually more or less stick around. In experimentsopens PDF file , dogs show a “secure base effectopens PDF file ” the way human children do: they explore their environment more, and interact more with other people, when their caretaker is present than when they’re alone. There’s even data suggesting that lab dogs may be more stressed by separation from their human caretakers than by a change of canine kennelmate.
So if our dogs love us so much, why do we need food rewards in training? Why isn’t it enough to praise them and show them affection? Why can’t they walk politely on leash for us, instead of for food?
People Need More Than Praise, Too
Let’s say you have a friend—affectionate, always ready to thank you for the slightly inconvenient favors she asks of you. Could you pick her up a loaf of bread from the grocery store, even though you weren’t going shopping yourself? “Gee, thanks a million!” she says. While you’re here, would you sweep the snow off her front porch? Certainly. How about making her a cup of coffee, would you mind? Yes, you kind of do. You have plans of your own for the day. No matter how warmly grateful your friend is, being asked for a constant stream of favors without practical reciprocity gets old PDQ.
Dogs Evolved to Work for Food
As for you and your dog, you’re often asking her to set aside her agenda in favor of your own. I’m not sure dogs get bored and irritated by this, exactly, but all animals have evolved to behave in ways that maximize their odds of surviving to reproduce. (It’s true that for many pet dogs reproduction is impossible, but that doesn’t change their evolutionary past.) To maximize the odds of living long enough to reproduce, you have to find food, water, and other essentials while expending as little energy as possible. All that walking on leash and coming when called and leaving the pot roast alone, for nothing but praise and scritches? Evolutionary alarm bells are ringing, folks.
Of course, you feed your dog. She gets her two squares a day—she doesn’t really need to conserve energy and focus her efforts on keeping herself alive, the way free-living animals do. However, think about this:
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Regular meals for dogs are a relatively new phenomenon
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Considering how many dogs there are, few get those regular meals.
All that evolutionary history of scrambling to get enough to eat to stay alive isn’t just going to evaporate. Your dog is still primed to do things that will get her food, in preference over things that don’t get her food.
If you’re thinking “Hmm, my Lassie does get happy and excited when I pet and praise her,” then ask yourself whether “Oh, what a cute wonderful good dog you are!” sometimes comes with a bite of cheese or meat attached. I’ll bet it does. And by the way, that’s absolutely fine.
Praise is a Valuable Reward When it Means Your Dog is Safe
I can already hear the old-school trainers claiming that their dogs respect them and work for praise, unlike the dogs trained by us cookie-slingers. Sorry, wrong. Old-fashioned trainers rely on “corrections,” usually meaning yanks on the dog’s neck with a choke or prong collar. If the dog doesn’t perform, she gets a yank, hard enough to cause pain or even briefly cut off her air. She works to avoid these consequences. And she’s learned that if she’s being praised there will be no yank. She doesn’t love praise for its own sake, but she sure does love feeling safe.
When is Food Not the Best Reward?
Food isn’t the best reward in every situation for every dog. Sometimes a dog is too anxious or agitated to want food. Sometimes she may want something else more—to greet someone, to chase a ball, even to pee. A dog who’s physically sick may lose her appetite. And, as I explained in a recent article, dogs who always have food available in their bowls may not have much motivation to work for more.
But for most dogs, most of the time, food is the most practical, sensible, and effective reward. We don’t have to feel bad about that. It doesn’t mean there’s anything missing from our relationship with our dogs. You should praise and pet your Dogalini as much as you both enjoy—just remember that when you’re training, food is the best way of hitching normal canine needs and wants to the behaviors you’d like to teach. And because reward-based training is safe and fun for dogs, it encourages them to trust us and pay attention to us, too. Sounds like a relationship-builder to me.
You can visit me on Facebook, where I’m The Dog Trainer, follow me as Dogalini on Twitter, or write to me at dogtrainer@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email. I read all my questions and comments, and though I usually can’t reply individually, I may use your question as the basis for a future article.
Thanks for reading!
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Jolanta holds professional certifications in both training and behavior counseling and belongs to the Association of Professional Dog Trainers and the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. She also volunteered with Pet Help Partners, a program of the Humane Society of the United States that works to prevent pet relinquishment. Her approach is generally behaviorist (Pavlovian, Skinnerian and post-Skinnerian learning theory) with a big helping of ethology (animal behavior as observed in non-experimental settings).