Transfering food motivation to toy motivation? Agility

[Sswor]

I have a highly food motivated terrier in agility. I am working with a fancy pants trainer who is insisting that I need to get him used to a toy reward to up the play value of the agility experience. She is convinced my dog is going places and I need to get him faster and digging in more on course to shave 10ths of seconds of my time. So, I am new at this and this is my first real agility dog and I started him with food treats as that is what he really gets into. If I attempt to reward him with a toy and a puppy party he is disappointed and keeps looking for the food. Even a crumb.

He is not a super high play dog with me, never has been. He will play a little with me but it’s more chasing games. He will play some fetch but he’d rather chase the toy, grab it, celebrate with it, and then run off alone to destroy it. I can get him to fetch a couple of times if I trade the retrieved toy for food but even with that game it’s 3 or 4 reps and then he goes to ground to destroy the toy.

He will trade anything for food. He has zero resource guarding tendencies.

He is highly trainable, he’s really easy to work with. I figure I can train him to do anything I want so…is it possible to train a dog to love playing with toys?

Yes I have done the “special toy” game–a special toy used only for reward, with the whole ceremony and excitement and yeah that’s cool for about 5 seconds, then bored, and zero transfer of this even 5 second excitement post-course. It’s just not rewarding to him. Just not. He will even totally ignore a thrown toy post course and go–where’s my food? No matter how much I run around and whoop and scamper and delight in the toy he just looks at me like I’m nuts and boring.

His reward seems to be running the actual course–chasing me, me chasing him, doing contacts, and me being woo woo excited at the end. Oh, and the food back at the crate.

I’m inclined to think this is square peg/round hole situation but fancy pants trainer is insistent that I need to work on it and get him toy motivated. I’m doing my best to be a good student. Any thoughts/suggestions?

Oh ps. he will tug pretty good at home but NEVER in public. He is a fairly low confidence dog that I have worked diligently since he was a tiny puppy to boost.

[Equibrit]

I can sympathize with you. I have terriers who keep the place rat free as their jobs. I thought they might enjoy some play time. We tried barn hunting and then nose work. they were brilliant when they started out. Their idea of reward is to kill something small and furry. Any substitute would NOT suffice. They ended up cataloging the courses and immediately sitting down, never having indicated a find. No way you could make them do that fake stuff!

[Irish_Ei_s]

Put knots in old socks or use small cotton monkeyknot balls. Soak them in a meat based broth then drop those wet toys into a bag or big bowl of dry yummy kibble.
Let 'em sit in there 24 hours, pull them out, air dry.

Tease them hard with those tasty toys, repeat as needed

[BostonBanker]

I taught my very food motivated/not very toy motivated BC/terrier mix to play tug fairly consistently. For him, restraining him in some way and then releasing him to the visible toy worked best (restrained recalls, releasing him from the crate or a doorway onto the toy, etc). I took advantage of the fact that the release creates a burst of energy and focus for him. However, it is a trained behavior. He does it because that is what he knows to do when the toy is presented - it isn’t actually rewarding to him. Your mileage may vary, as training with toys isn’t my strongest skill for sure. Maybe there was more I should have and could have done.

What I had better luck with was finding better ways to train with food. Things like treat toys that I could throw and he could run to and reward himself with, leaving food on a target or outside the ring, and releasing him to that when I wanted to reward him, etc. Mostly focusing on getting the food off me. It’s not perfect, and I do find scenarios where I would prefer to have the opportunity to reward with toys, but it’s been fairly successful for us. Finding a trainer who knew how to work with the non-toy motivated dog (a lot of successful agility people don’t have that skill set) was a big turning point.

[Sswor]

@Irish Ei's

Put knots in old socks or use small cotton monkeyknot balls. Soak them in a meat based broth then drop those wet toys into a bag or big bowl of dry yummy kibble.
Let 'em sit in there 24 hours, pull them out, air dry.

Tease them hard with those tasty toys, repeat as needed

Oh gosh–thank you. Fancy pants trainer suggested exactly that during Q&A brainpicking session after last lesson and I totally forgot. We talked about so much stuff. Some “good student” I am. THANK YOU for the memory jog. I’ll get on this tomorrow.

And thank you @Equibrit for the commiseration. I’ve noticed not many people run terriers in agility. Certainly not the breed type of choice anyway. But fancy pants trainer runs them so I’m not totally crazy. But still. Can my dog come over to kill some rats??? Maybe I need to look up an urban ratting group in my area…

[Irish_Ei_s]

Just figured out that rubbing a wet buillion cube over a fabric toy would really be easier and cheaper

[Marshfield]

Liverwurst in a sock is how my trainer starts–or at least one way she starts to try to get food motivated dogs interested in toys. There are also lotus balls and bungee pouches you can fill.

That said, I honestly don’t think it is mandatory. Cookie jar games and delayed gratification is. Toy play can be developed. My youngest learned poles working for her buffalo tug. Her older sister, clicker and cookies. We also do play without toys.

if toy play is something you want, check out Fenzi dog sports academy. I also have a wide array of toys with real fur. Fleece or rope doesn’t do it for Twister. TugAway Cuwin and Genuine Dog gear are two of my go tos

[jreventer]

I understand that many trainers especially in sports wants dogs to have toy rewards, but often it seems to be square peg round hole. I have a rhodesian who is 18 months old and getting ready to certify for search and rescue. I have spent the past year working on her toy drive. She has been struggling a little with her alert (she finds the people but sometimes struggles to let us know fully). Last week, we gave up the toys and switched straight to food for her reward. And within two sessions, she is nailing her alerts. She is the same as your boy; toys are fun for a few seconds but then boring. But food is awesome always! I say use what works best for your dog.
There are food toys where you put the food in a pouch and they have to get the food out…maybe something like that?

I did recently listen to this podcast by Hannah Brannigan and she had the same issue with her border terrier and used food to build toy drive.
https://wonderpupstraining.com/podcast/71/

[Irish_Ei_s]

Or let fancypants trainer do it.

[Equibrit]

@Sswor

Can my dog come over to kill some rats??? Maybe I need to look up an urban ratting group in my area…

Only if you want to carry a live rat in the agility ring.

[Sswor]

@Equibrit

Only if you want to carry a live rat in the agility ring.

No I just meant for extracurricular fun.

[Sswor]

@Marshfield

Liverwurst in a sock is how my trainer starts–or at least one way she starts to try to get food motivated dogs interested in toys. There are also lotus balls and bungee pouches you can fill.

That said, I honestly don’t think it is mandatory. Cookie jar games and delayed gratification is. Toy play can be developed. My youngest learned poles working for her buffalo tug. Her older sister, clicker and cookies. We also do play without toys.

if toy play is something you want, check out Fenzi dog sports academy. I also have a wide array of toys with real fur. Fleece or rope doesn’t do it for Twister. TugAway Cuwin and Genuine Dog gear are two of my go tos

Thanks for the info and advice.

[Equibrit]

@Sswor

No I just meant for extracurricular fun.

Yes.Once they go the rat route, nothing else will do. (In my experience!)

[bdj]

OP, do whatever works best (and is easiest) for you and your dog! If the dog works well for food, why waste that? Do you have some heavy-duty goals (like winning at Nationals or something) that ride on you shaving off those 1/10ths of seconds? Given that you mention that this is your first real agility dog and that you’re “new at this” I’m guessing (and hoping) the answer to that is no.
Don’t let your goals get muddled with those of your trainer’s. She may well be focused on shaving off those 1/100ths of a second and winning the NAC with her own dogs (and that’s great for her), but if your goal is to have fun with your dog, and earn some titles? Tenths of seconds just aren’t that important most of the time (in AKC, at least).

I’ve got two good little dogs (ranked 2nd and 6th in our breed this past year) and both of them are food rewarded. One has a lily toy: https://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm/product/5224/lily-treat-dispensing-pull-apart-toy.htm - but she’s only interested in it because it has food in it - it’s less a toy than a food-delivery-device to her, and once the food is gone, she’s not interested in it at all. (Which is totally fine with me - I’m just as happy to not have to wreck my body bending down to play tug games all the time!)

[Sswor]

@Equibrit

Yes.Once they go the rat route, nothing else will do. (In my experience!)

He’s already killed two of my hens and various yard varmints. Perhaps this is part of the issue then.

Regardless, I’ll give it a go. Since I know next to nothing, and absolutely nothing about where we are going from here, I best follow the advice I am paying for and at least see where it’s taking me.

I made the meat-broth sock last night and let it air dry. Now I’m fretting that it may have gone/go rancid. I put the dried sock in a plastic bag in the fridge after it was dry.

I do have difficulty separating trainer goals from my own goals. My personal goal at first was to entertain the high energy dog. Now, seems the dog has skills and my goal is to be good at this sport. I have to watch it though, I get a little too intense about things, which can take the fun right out of it. Did it with horse sports, now am completely ambivalent about competing. I kind of see me going down that road with dog sports.

[stargzng386]

Get the toys that you can put treats in. I’ve seen that work really well in my agility classes with other similar dogs. Also they have ones that have rabbit fur. My terrier loses her ever-loving mind because it’s like she’s chasing a bunny versus a toy.

https://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_ID=4996&ParentCat=22

This site has lots of options you can sort toys by ones that hold treats.

[Sswor]

Just wanted to bump this up and say YES it IS possible to transfer food motivation to toy motivation and for us it’s been quite worth it. Trainer brought in a selection of toys that you can fill with food for just this purpose. I thought the rabbit fur with a squeaky inside would be the hit but the mesh bag that you load with meat was where it was at for my dog. Adding tugging on the meat bag as a reward rather then a piece of food has seriously increased our performance and I never would have expected. He delights in the game, forgives me when I screw up (I suck, seriously), and will go an entire hour without looking for something else to do. It brought the play back to agility for him. Oh and he’s so much faster. He’s so much faster my handling is now seriously suffering. I better get better fast. I’ll never start another dog with just food treats. The difference in him is startling.

Ps, meat sock was BORING. Zero interest, even stuffed with meat and knotted, no go. That boring looking $12 black mesh bag from clean run is the bees knees.

Pps, I’ve also incorporated a lotus ball for contacts and after weaves and that’s a hit too, but I added that later, after the meat bag caught his attention.

[Foxtrot_s]

In Hunt counties in UK, when a farmer needs to pull down an old building, they invite all the JR’s over for a hunt - rats everywhere - dogs going mad. Flip flip, shake shake - carnage.