Agility Training with Food

If you ask Google for tutorials about tugging and toy play for agility, you’ll get thousands of hits, and most of them will be quite relevant.

If you ask Google for tutorials about training agility with food, you’ll get … not a lot that’s relevant. A mix of dog food ads, and blog posts telling you that it’s really important to get your agility dog tugging and yes you can do it even if your dog is only interested in food.

Tug toys are great. I view them as the gold standard choice of reward for many agility training exercises. Virtually all of the top agility competitors, both in NZ and around the world, use tug toys for a lot of their training. This is why the content you’ll find online is so heavily skewed towards “So you want to do agility but your dog doesn’t like tugging? Here’s how you can invest hours of your life into getting him tugging!”.

But what if you don’t want to do that? What if you have limited time to train and want to make progress on “real agility” skills rather than tugging? What if you want to try agility training or competition, but you don’t have elite ambitions for your dog and you’d rather just use food? What if it’s your first agility dog and you don’t have the skills to teach your dog to enjoy tugging with only the guidance of a 15-minute video on YouTube?

If you have a young puppy that you intend to do agility with, I’d recommend putting the effort into teaching your dog to like tugging, even if he doesn’t take to it immediately. It’s easier to get play going with a pup (let’s be honest, he’s putting everything into his mouth anyway), and you’ve got plenty of time before your pup is old enough to be doing “real agility” anyway.

If you have an older dog, it’s going to take more effort to get tugging started, and possibly for less benefit. I got Rik at the age of 2.5 and she had no interest in putting her mouth on objects. I did shape her to retrieve and eventually found toys that she enjoyed chomping on enough to use them as an agility reward, but all of her agility training for the first few months I had her was done with food. She eventually learned to enjoy tugging at home, but we never used that as an agility reward because she made it clear that she’d rather have her favourite squishy ball.

What if My Dog Doesn’t Like Food Either?

Dogs need to eat to live. That means they are biologically hardwired to enjoy some food in some situations – otherwise they would die. So your first task is to experiment and find out which of those foods and situations work for your dog.

• Food – try a variety of foods the dog doesn’t usually get. I like to use cheese, hot dogs, chicken, freeze-dried liver … things that are tasty and strong-smelling but still quite good nutrition-wise. If your dog has any food allergies, you’ll obviously need to take these into account. There is bound to be something in the deli meat section of the supermarket that your dog will love.
• Situations – I am not going to tell you to starve your dog so that he’ll be hungrier for his agility training. Food is one of the most essential things for survival, and should never be withheld except for medical reasons. I am going to say that you should arrange your training for times of day when your dog is likely to be hungry (i.e. just before his meals). If that doesn’t fit into your schedule, perhaps you could change his meal times so that you can make it work. Start your food training at home, where your dog is likely to feel more confident.

If your dog won’t eat food reliably just before his meal, then there is a problem with his appetite. Either:

• He’s unwell – if my dogs leave food in their bowl for two meals in a row, I take them to the vet straight away because I assume it’s an emergency – and so far it has been 3 out of the 5 times that’s happened. If you have a dog who regularly leaves food in his bowl, ask your vet whether he could have a chronic condition which affects his appetite, e.g. a stomach ulcer.
• You’re feeding him too much – I had a puppy who would leave most of her meals untouched. I got a bit neurotic about how to “make” her eat. After a couple of months of this, one of my agility vet friends pointed out to me that my puppy was FAT. I halved how much I gave her and suddenly she was much more interested in eating, plus she lost her love handles. Dogs taking part in agility training should be a healthy weight – see this chart from WSAVA to assess your dog’s body condition. I ignore the recommended feeding amounts on the dog food packages (which can’t possibly suit all individuals of different breeds, exercise levels etc) and adjust my dogs’ meal size every 2-4 weeks based on a quick check of their ribs, hips and waist. If in doubt, ask your vet – but be frank that you are want your dog to be on the lean side of normal, because they have to deal with a lot of conversations where people don’t want to be told that their dog is a bit pudgy.
• You’re free-feeding – I don’t recommend leaving food down for your dog all day because it makes it hard to monitor his appetite (so you might not notice straight away if he gets sick) and most free-fed dogs that I see are overweight. There are other reasons not to as well. At the moment I feed my dogs twice a day – I put their food down, do something else in the kitchen, and pick their bowls up within ten minutes.

What Makes a Good Reward?

There are a few reasons why tug toys are so popular for agility training:

• Throwing – they are easy to throw over medium distances, and tend to stay where they land rather than bouncing.
• Targeting – they are easily visible by the dog if you leave them on the ground and want the dog to run towards them.
• Limited options for self-reinforcement – because tug play is interactive, you have the opportunity to turn it “on” or “off” by deciding whether to tug with your dog or not. If he steals the toy when he wasn’t supposed to, you can take it off him without tugging him, which will make toy-stealing a less desirable option to your dog. This does vary between dogs though – if your dog loves to play keepaway, he can have lots of fun with his toy all on his own.
• Increases excitement – playing with a toy is a very active behaviour and tends to get the adrenalin pumping and the excitement level up.
• Specific to your dog – in general, agility dogs don’t covet their doggy friends’ tug toys. This means you can leave them on the ground at agility training or shows, without some other dog stealing them.
• Fits in a hand/pocket – most tug toys can be folded up small enough to hold them in your hand or pocket, where they aren’t obviously visible to your dog.
• Can be taken into the ring – in NZ you are usually allowed to take a tug toy with you into the competition ring if you want to “train in the ring”, although your run won’t be judged if you. On the other hand, it’s very rare to be allowed to take food in, because if you leave any crumbs behind they could be distracting to other dogs.

Food-in-a-Thing: A Better Food Reward for Agility

One of the easiest ways to make food more suitable for agility training is to put it into another object. You can buy expensive toys to do this – they are called “gamble balls” or “lotus balls” or “clams”, and have velcro seams that your dog can push apart with his nose to access the food. But you can also use something you have at home to get 90% of the benefits – a fluffy pencil case, an empty pill bottle, an old film canister (yes I’m old), a very small Tupperware item…

Let’s think about how the food-in-a-thing applies to the criteria of good rewards that I listed above:

• Throwing – it’s heavier, so easier to throw further and more accurately than a little piece of food.
• Targeting – it’s bigger, so easier for the dog to see from a distance. On the down side, the dog does have to wait for you to catch up before he can get his food.
• Limited options for self-reinforcement – the food is enclosed, so the dog can’t get it until either you run up and open the container, or he brings it back and gives it to you. In this respect it’s better than a gamble ball or leaving food in a bowl, because you can choose to not open the container, and the dog won’t get his food.
• Increases excitement – you get some benefit here from being able to throw it, or leave it as a target for your dog to run to. If you want a blazingly fast foodie agility dog, you should also design a warmup routine with lots of movement to help get your dog “in the zone”.
• Specific to your dog – most dogs will be interested in a container of treats, but if you use a sturdy container, at least they won’t be able to steal the food.
• Fits in a hand/pocket – ideally you will be able to find a container that does fit into your pocket. Don’t let a shortage of perfect containers put you off getting started though – it will be very easy to introduce a new container later.
• Can be taken into the ring – unfortunately not. But you can get some of the benefit by training a verbal cue to tell your dog it’s time to run to the side of the ring and devour his treats.

Training with Food-in-a-Thing

Here’s the training process I would use to teach a dog to really engage with his food-in-a-thing reward.

1. Race to Reward (video from @ongoodbehavior) – start this at home, where you can use an open bowl and not have to worry about other dogs getting into it. Place a high-value treat into the bowl, move away with your dog, and then let him go and get the food. You should be moving alongside your dog and “racing” him to the bowl – try to find a distance where your dog will just beat you even when you are running towards the bowl. Experiment with different treats e.g. cheese, chicken, hot dogs, freeze-dried liver – you need to find something that your dog is really keen to run to the bowl for, and ideally something that isn’t part of his everyday diet.
2. Add a verbal cue (blog post from Hybrid Training) – watch the video where Kelly introduces her word “Treaties”. There is a lot of awesome training going on in this video, but for now you just need to look at the first 30 seconds. I would start by restraining my dog (as in the Race to Reward game), saying the word, and then letting the dog go. Today I’m mostly talking about how to get your dog really keen for your food rewards. Self-control around rewards is also important, but let’s get the desire for the food first and then worry about that.
3. Swap the bowl for the food-in-a-thing – start by putting your treat next to or on top of your container, as in the Hybrid Training video above. Let your dog see you putting the food down, move him away, and say your special verbal cue. Immediately let go of his collar, and race forward with him towards the container.
4. Enclose the food in the container – now you are going to put the food inside the container, where the dog can’t access it without your help. Run with him to the container and open it up for him straight away. Experiment with different food deliveries – one treat, a handful of treats, several treats fed one at a time – to find what gets your dog most excited.
5. Throwing – now you’re ready to try throwing it as a reward for a movement-based behaviour. Leave your dog in a sit stay (or with a helper holding him) and run away, holding the food-in-a-thing in your hand. Continue to run forward as you call the dog, and then throw the food-in-a-thing ahead of you just before he reaches your side. Keep running until you reach the container, and have a celebration with your dog.