So today I decided to teach George the “snoot” trick. While this trick appears easy in technique, if you have a food-obsessed dog like George, it is a challenge! I had to enlist the help of my mother to hold a treat behind my hands to guide his nose. However, he would often use his paw to move my hands to get to the treat, or he would move his head to the side of my hands. The best way for him to complete this trick was to hold the treat directly behind my hands. I tried for about an hour but George just got more naughty as time went on. He has not been able to complete the trick solely by identifying my hand placement as the command, and is still on the treat guidance phase. I will continue to practice this trick and hopefully he can learn it in a way that a treat is offered after the trick is completed instead of before.

Marissa Taffer wrote a blog post Tips for Training Your Food-Motivated Dog and brought up something I had not before considered: the use of a bribe vs. a reward. She mentions that bribes come before the behaviour, while rewards come afterwards. She explains this as: “So, if you’re always holding up a piece of hot dog and telling your dog sit, this is essentially a bribe. On the other hand, a reward is offered after the behavior. “It’s an important distinction, because “bribing” is not an effective way to train, but rewarding/reinforcing is. If you bribe, your dog will only perform the behavior if there’s a piece of food in front of him first. If you reward, then your dog will perform the behavior in hopes of earning that piece of food.” I had not really considered the concept of bribing your dog, and always saw treats as rewards, Perhaps I need to shift more towards the clicker method rather than relying on treat-first training.

Here is a snippet of my training session with George