Delivery check point!

Delivering food is an essential component of training.

Often, we take it for granted, assuming that dogs will eat food anywhere, anytime, and regardless of how it is delivered. We forget to observe how our dogs consume food and fail to pay attention to our own delivery skills.

Today’s exercise will focus on assessing how your dog takes food and how you deliver it. This assessment will allow us to adjust the difficulty level of the tasks in this course. Let’s begin in location #1. Our goal is to ensure a smooth delivery process where neither the dog nor you are distracted. We want your dog to eat one treat after another without interruption.

The criteria are fluent eating, precise treat-taking, precise delivery on your part, and the speed specified in your plan. We do not want any pauses or breaks in eating or delivery. Other than eating, we are not concerned about what the dog does during this exercise.

Instructions:

Prepare 5 to 10 treats.
Stand or sit in front of your dog.
Deliver treats one at a time.
Wait for the dog to finish chewing the previous treat before delivering the next one.
The only criterion we are focusing on is the dog eating the treats.
Deliver the treats without any breaks, maintaining a fast pace.

Fluent treat-taking is an important training skill when food functions as the planned reinforcer; it is not something we should assume will look the same in every environment.

Please collect data on:

The time your dog needs between each treat.
Any behavior outside the planned delivery loop that occurs during the exercise.

By monitoring these variables, we can gain valuable insights into the efficiency of the delivery process and make necessary adjustments to improve overall training outcomes.