Feel Like Your Dog Is NOT Motivated By Food?

by Bailey Coldwell

When bringing home a new puppy, you might have prepared by buying many bags of treats. You feel ready to get your puppy and to immediately begin teaching new cues and giving the pup yummy snacks. Many handlers feel panicked when their puppy comes home and is not acting interested in kibble or treats. Are we not going to be able to do any training with the puppy?! 

It is more common than not for pups to lack appetite when first coming home. Even some of my labrador retrievers (a breed well known for being food-crazy) have been food snobs the first few days of being home. In many situations, we just need to be a bit patient as the puppy adjusts. Their entire worlds just changed, and sometimes food isn’t the first priority on their minds. So, the first step? Give it some time. 

If your new puppy isn’t obsessed with their kibble, adding higher-value food on top of the dog’s kibble can be tempting. This tends to have the opposite results long term. Adding food toppers can teach the dog that if they wait long enough to eat, eventually, you will offer them something better. Therefore, discuss high-quality dog food with your veterinarian and simply stick with that for meals. You can add water if you would like, but avoid putting anything else on top of the dog food. It can also be tempting just to put the dog food down and allow the dog to eat whenever they want to. This won’t motivate the dog to train for food if they know that food is always available elsewhere. This can also make potty training more difficult due to the unpredictability of when the puppy needs to potty. Keeping the dog’s food dish out all day can lead to obesity. If you ever plan to get another pet in your home, having one dog bowl left out during the day can become a problem. It could lead to resource guarding and/or the new animal being more food-motivated and eating all the food. As long as the puppy is healthy (which you can confirm with your veterinarian), we recommend offering your dog their kibble (with or without water) for 10-15 minutes. Avoid coaxing your dog to eat, as they will like this extra attention. Simply set the food down in a relatively boring area, such as a crate or a pen. Whatever the puppy doesn’t eat, offer it for training throughout the day or for their next meal. Dogs won’t starve themselves. If we stick with this consistently, the dog will learn to eat what we offer, when offered, to them.  

If your puppy is not eating their kibble, you want to be mindful about not giving too many treats for training. We want the majority of their calories to come from their actual food. Until your puppy is doing well at eating their kibble, save the majority of treats for good behaviors that are important to you. For example, you can use treats for pottying outside. Or if your puppy is struggling with barking at dogs, you can use treats when your dog sees a dog and doesn’t bark. But try not to overuse the treats if your dog is not currently very willing to eat their kibble. Another tip for using minimal treats and trying to get in more calories of your dog’s food, is creating a “puppy trail mix” in your treat pouch. Have a decent amount of kibble mixed with a few higher-value treats and some medium-value treats. This will help it be more of a “surprise” of what the puppy is getting as a reward, the kibble will smell/taste more like the higher-value treats, and the puppy is more likely to be motivated to train. 

So far, we have talked a lot about dog food. I now want to switch gears to other forms of rewards besides food. Sure, rewarding our dogs with food tends to be one of the easiest ways to train. But there are many other ways for us to train and reward our dogs using life rewards. Here are some examples: 

• Toys: Throughout puppyhood, experiment with different types of toys. Tug toys, squeaker toys, and balls are popular options for rewards during play sessions. It can be helpful to save a few special toys that are only used during training sessions. This is a good time to think about your dog’s natural instincts. Herding breeds might find a yoga ball a great reward because they can push it around to mimic herding. Retrievers, who belong in the sporting groups, will likely find a thrown ball rewarding for doing a good behavior. 

• Play with you: Make yourself fun! Be playful. We don’t recommend allowing the dog to bite or jump on you, but be animated. Bring out your inner kid, and don’t be afraid to look goofy. Switching between play and training is a great way to help keep things fun and energy levels more balanced. 

• Verbal praise: Determine what tone of voice your puppy enjoys. Many young puppies will enjoy you talking to them in a high-pitched tone with lots of fun sounds. Be aware that some pups might get TOO excited by this and require us to calm our voices down if they are getting too worked up. 

• Physical praise: Not all physical praise is created equally! When using contact as a reward, you want to make sure your dog enjoys how you are petting them. Many dogs don’t love being patted on their heads, for example. But lots of dogs enjoy a chest or back scratch. Work on learning where your dogs enjoy being pet and use this as a reward. A doggy massage or cuddling can also be an option (especially once dogs are a bit older and not as excitable). 

• “Just for Fun” cues and “Games and Activities”: Puppies have short attention spans. Sometimes, normal training cues can become repetitive and boring. I like to make training more exciting by adding more active and fun cues. Teach your dogs cues such as turn, shake, and catch. We have an entire “Just for Fun” program and a section on “Games and Activities”. Add these into your training sessions to help encourage pups to last longer during training sessions without getting bored or overstimulated. Another tip? Move around while you are training and playing with your dog. This can help make the session less stationary and more enjoyable. 

• Outside time: The power of a dog’s nose is exceptional. It is something that we, as humans, can't even begin to comprehend. One of the biggest rewards for a dog is simply allowing them to smell. You can work on having a training session with your dog beside the door to go outside. You can also utilize sniffing as a reward while you are outside. My favorite reward while leash walking is giving the dog a break to sniff the side of a trail if they have been walking with me nicely. Don’t underestimate the power of simply letting your dog sniff! 

• Going for a car ride: This can be a hit or miss with dogs. If you have a dog who enjoys going for a ride, maybe even with the windows down to get fresh air and fresh smells, consider doing a training session outside of the vehicle before going for a ride. 

• Greetings: I know that my dog LOVES my parents. A good reward for her would be me allowing her to go and say hi to them. If my parents are coming to visit, right before they arrive would be an awesome time for me to do a training session and/or encourage good behaviors. If she does well, she gets to go say hi to some of her favorite people. 

Think about who your best friend is as a person. You know their favorite TV show, their drink order, and the music they listen to on their way to work. There was a time when you didn’t know any of that. They were strangers to you. This might also be the case with you and your new puppy. When you are just getting started, the puppy is a stranger to you. You are a stranger to your puppy. You will naturally start to learn more and more about your puppy and what they enjoy. Likewise, your puppy will form a bond with you and simply enjoy training with you. Keep taking it day by day and you both will figure it out.