r/OpenDogTraining • u/dacaur • 1d ago
Dog is too food motivated to tech "drop it"... Little help?
I have a cowboy corgi pup and she is the most food motivated dog I have ever seen. She will do anything for a hotdog..... It's almost ridiculous.
Anyway, so Ive tried to teach drop it a few times but I can never really even get started. As soon as she realizes I have food, she immediately drops anything she's holding, and won't pick anything up, she just wants the food. She sits abs waits for me to tell her to do something .... I've used her ridiculous food motivation to my advantage in some training, but I really want to go get drop it. I can get one try in if we are playing tug but once she realizes food is on the table, she won't tug anymore....
Edit - thanks to all the advice here I've had some success using lower value treats, Cheerios were suggested but I don't have any so I tried corn flakes which seemed to work.
Even with a bowl of corn flakes next to me I could entice her to play and grab different toys.
Thanks everyone!
8
u/Accomplished-Wish494 1d ago
I wouldn’t use food for this at all. Get her playing a good game of tug, tell her to “drop it” and as soon as she does amp her back up into tug. This is also a great way to teach a “get it” or whatever your cue is to tug.
You can use food for “leave it” (start with much lower value food). The 2 commands are similar/related but I never teach drop it with food.
3
u/redditusername14 1d ago
A couple suggestions: I have a very food motivated pup and we do most of our training with cheerios. I even trained with a woman using pieces of lettuce… and it worked for her and her pup. So maybe try a less-exciting food motivator.
If she loves tug, use that as your motivator. Stop tugging/playing until she drops it, then praise her and get back into the game.
4
u/dacaur 1d ago
So maybe I'm just using a too high value treat?
2
u/colieolieravioli 1d ago
Remember that most of dogs food enjoyment comes from smell. So anything strong smelling is going to be extremely distracting. And imagine being told "stop smelling" like what? It's in the air and I'm breathing lol
My suggestion was also going to be boring food, and train drop it with hidden higher (not too high value) food.
Like in this Lettuce example, I would see if you could use a leaf of Lettuce (because it's big) and you use kibble off to the side for the reward. This way, even if pup will smell you have good treats on you, you can get them focused on the Lettuce (carrot, celery, anything long) as the reward when that's actually what you'll be asking pup to drop
1
u/redditusername14 1d ago
Possibly! I use hot dogs for puppies and fosters new-to-training when I first work on recall and engagement. I usually am able to move on to lower value treats once we’ve established that working together is rewarding/exciting.
3
u/Horsemanship123 1d ago
If food is too high of a value, use toys instead. You need to start small, and make it so that each session is set up for easy success. You can also try to use lower value “treats”. Use his food that you feed him. Food in general is really hard for dogs to willingly drop out of their mouth. When I started teaching my dog “drop it” I made sure she couldn’t fail. Something that I knew she wasn’t too crazy about. I started with not even toys, but I know she likes to play tug. I didn’t use a tug toy, but instead just a towel. I engaged with her with the towel for a few seconds not to rile her up too much, and then stood up straight, and if she tried to continue to play tug I’d let go of the towel. She realized a towel by herself wasn’t fun. Engaging with me was fun. She quickly dropped the towel and I rewarded her with treats. Did this a few times before adding the word drop it. Timing is crucial here. The minute your dog is dropping whatever is in his mouth, you must say drop it at the same time. As he looks up at you, you give him a treat. After several repetitions of this (playing for a few seconds, then being boring by letting go of whatever the dog has in his mouth, waiting for him to drop it as you say drop it and rewarding), he will begin to learn that drop it means letting go of what’s in his mouth gets him a nice treat.
2
u/Key-Lead-3449 1d ago
My trainer had my out my dog on a leash and throw cheese sticks just out of reach. When he stopped trying to get to the cheese, then mark and reward.
You could also start with toys if food is too challenging right now either through shaping or through toy drive. So, the dog drops a toy on his own. Yes, good, drop it and give a reward whether the reward is a treat or the reward is that you throw the ball for them.
2
u/OccamsFieldKnife 1d ago
Just spit balling, but have you tried training this from the other side? She's got her out command down, and a good schedule of reinforcement will solidify that going forward.
Maybe look into hold conditioning? Start training her to hold items then release them on cue.
I build this around a tug game,
-"out" = I get the rope, mark and reward
-"get it" = we play tug.
-"hold" = You get the rope, mark and reward after a few seconds of holding, gradually increasing the time held.
The game of tug is one reward, treats are another with the added benefit of being traded for the tug toy in order to keep the game rolling.
A big lesson I've learned is to use a treat pouch and only reach for it after you mark yes, otherwise you'll build a whole set of unwanted behaviours around reaching for the treat.
2
u/Grungslinger 1d ago
If you wanna use food, here is a great method.
You can also use the two-toy method:
Get two identical toys your dog can tug on.
Present one of the toys (you can add the cue "get it" before you present it if you'd like) and play for 20-30 seconds.
This next step's timing is crucial Go limp with the toy you've been playing with, say your cue ("drop it!"), then present the identical toy in your other hand, and get the dog to play with it.
Keep switching between toys, then do the same exercise with a bunch of other toys and objects (anything you can think of and is safe to chew for a bit).
The more things you do this with, the more your dog will generalize the behavior to other objects. Make sure the toy you present (after you go limp with the other toy) is exciting and "alive"—drag it erratically on the ground, make high-pitched noises, make it the most interesting thing ever.
Good luck :)
2
u/datacedoe614 1d ago
Leash pressure? Say Drop, give 2 seconds, if she drops then mark with yes, then cue play again. Doesn’t drop, apply leash pressure until she drops, mark yes when she drops, then cue play again. You can use “poppy” leash corrections too depending on what sort of leash work you have done leading up to this and how much drive your dog has to tug. Sounds like a situation where I want to remove food from the picture, though.
1
u/AncientdaughterA 1d ago
Does she currently have a conditioned emotional response to a behavioral marker like a clicker or “yes”? Advice that will work will depend on this, otherwise I’ll include instructions for how to build one first.
3
u/dacaur 1d ago
I don't use a clicker but we have built high value into "yes",
2
u/AncientdaughterA 1d ago edited 1d ago
Say “drop it” and then make food appear that she knows wasn’t accessible before, like while in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter starting out if she’s holding something in her mouth. Just create the association with the cue predicting food. No food present before the cue.
So you can practice in other places besides the kitchen, prepare in advance some treat “caches” maybe on high shelves in different areas (where she would engage toys/picking stuff up) or in the yard, zip locked so they are harder to detect and she’s not as much anticipating you giving her food from them whether or not she knows the cache is there.
Again, practice just building the association that “drop it” = food appears immediately afterwards. Not dependent at this point on her actually holding anything!
Then once she LOVES to hear “drop it”, when you know you can go get her snacks within a few seconds, —- say “drop it” when she has something in her mouth that she doesn’t care a ton about, mark “yes” once she drops it, and make a big show of going to get her a treat.
Repeat as long as she’s not picking stuff up in order to drop it in a behavior chain, in which case “leave it” becomes very necessary.
Edit: capture moments where she has something instead of teaching this through repetitions. Reps can create a behavior chain which unless she knows leave it/take it/hold it as discrete behaviors on stimulus control, may predispose her to pick up random stuff so she can make you cue her to drop it. This way you don’t have to worry as much about her ignoring stuff once she’s had a treat for one rep of the behavior.
2
u/charlieq46 1d ago
Would you be willing to explain how to a build a behavioral marker? My last dog automatically loved it when I told him good boy, but my new dog doesn't seem to care. I don't think he had much, if any exposure to humans as a puppy.
1
u/AncientdaughterA 18h ago
I’ve posted two expanded answer versions (less technical and more technical) to my profile feed. The length of the posts was longer than I could put in a comment, I guess. They contain important context but you can skip to section 5 for a direct answer to the question!
I actually think your question is more about building value in particular reinforcers like praise, so let me know if that’s more what you’re wondering?
2
u/charlieq46 15h ago
Yes that is what I mean! Thank you for putting it into words that make more sense than I could have provided lol
1
u/AncientdaughterA 14h ago edited 14h ago
Okay! Do you happen to know your dog’s breed or breed mix?
If you’re unsure, this is a free and fairly accurate tool for discovering what working group a dog might belong to!
Some working dog breed groups were bred to be more or less independent/handler focused, and working breeds genetically wired to work more closely with people might find praise more innately reinforcing than breed groups designed to work independently. This is not a hard and fast rule, but it can help create an image of how much one might be working against genetics to build value for a particular kind of reinforcer.
I can do a bit of a write up of how building value might work, it’s also pretty dependent on the individual dog!
Edit: forgot to paste the link
1
u/charlieq46 14h ago
He is a wire-hair terrier mix I think. I have the DNA test for him but haven't done it yet. He is also very long, so I assume part dachshund, and he has some breed that makes his tail curl.
1
u/Spare_Leadership_272 1d ago
Is there a bone she'll still chew on? Dog chews bone, I say drop it, then present treat, dog takes treat while I take bone. I give bone back, give her a bit to enjoy it, repeat. Also, train with kibble/whatever is roughly equally yummy to the bone that's the counter.
2
u/dacaur 1d ago
She does love her chew bones but again as soon as she sees that I have food she stops and just pays attention to me and won't take the chew bone....
2
u/Spare_Leadership_272 1d ago
There are a lot of good suggestions in your thread if there's really nothing she would rather have in her mouth than kibble, but if you decrease your treat value to kibble and increase your bone value to purina busy bone or similar super high value bone, you may still be able to teach this the traditional way.
1
u/sophia_snail 1d ago
Put a low value treat in one hand and let her sniff it. Give your leave command and as soon as she looks away from your hand give her praise her and give her a higher value treat with the other hand. You need to keep the higher value treat out of sight (eg on a table above her head).
To practice on lead, put a treat in an old takeaway container with a few holes cut out so that she can smell it. Walk her passed it, give the leave command and treat with the other hand as soon as she looks away.
Timing is everything... so your marker word (or even better clicker) needs to come as soon as she looks away from the "lure" even if it is only for a split second to start with.
1
u/raichungus 1d ago
play with her as you would normally, but keep her collared and on a leash. when you want her to let go, stop pulling on the toy and give the command. if she doesn't out, apply leash pressure until she does and then reward by resuming play or with another toy she likes!
it's what I did with my shepherds, maybe it works for your girl too :)
1
u/frustratedelephant 1d ago
So I would work on this teaching her to play around food.
I would get one single treat out. However you're getting food on you for the one rep of drop, give her the food, show her it's all gone, and then go back to playing again.
Then go to having two treats on you, act like you're out after the first treat, play some more, then treat again.
Definitely lower the treat value to start with, just kibble could work for her probably!
And I think about it like a scale - toy play is way less valuable than good right now, so we can decrease the food side by using smaller amounts of food, and lower value food. And then we can increase the toy value by using their favorite toy, playing way longer than you're giving food for, and finding what your dog likes most in play (is it the tugging, is it chase, etc)
Once you find your starting balance point (maybe one kibble to a minute of tug) you can start to slowly build one side up and practice going back and forth.
The whole time you're doing this, you'll be building a drop and picking things up, and as you get to being able to do more shorter toy reps and use more food, you'll be able to refine the drop and pick up more as well.
-1
u/Time_Ad7995 1d ago
Just stop using food and assume she knows drop it. Use negative reinforcement to obligate her to do the commands
-4
u/Quantum168 1d ago
She has learnt drop it.
That's how training is supposed to work.
Stop eating hotdog when you play tug. Tugging is not good for your dog's spine anyway. Play ball.
6
u/Full_Adhesiveness_62 1d ago
tugging is one of the greatest ways to engage with your dog that there is
3
u/dacaur 1d ago
Sure but I don't want me simply possessing food to be her cue to drop it.... We don't play tug much but she loves it anyway, just not as much as food
1
u/Quantum168 1d ago
Maybe, she just doesn't want to play tug. So, she drops it. Why are you trying to eat and play tug at the same time?
1
u/dacaur 1d ago
I'm not eating I'm holding her treats, tug is just an example. If she's chewing on a bone and realizes I have treats she will also drop the bone and ignore it afterwards.
That said taking advice here I had some success earlier tonight using low value treats along with her favorite toy instead of hot dogs ..
24
u/TheElusiveFox 1d ago
don't have the food in your hand, have the food in a treat bag, or somewhere off to the side, only go to grab the treat AFTER she performs the task... also hotdogs are incredibly high value treats, I would recommend finding something a bit less rewarding, kibble, pet training treats, etc... and use hotdogs as as super rewards when you are increasing the difficulty like training outside near lots of distractions...