It’s all about the treats

Like every other dog pawrent I love my dogs and want nothing but the best for them. Which is why I love to spoil them with a treat, though my wife would say I ruin them. When we go for out walks I always have a healthy (pocket full) of treats to dish out to them if they behave and come when I call them back from the water where Pepper loves to swim for a stick and Ronnie will follow as long as I throw a treat in for him. Which makes me wonder if he’s smarter than he should be!

When we see a cyclist approach and they sit nice as the cyclist passes they get a treat as reward, though they wouldn’t chase the cyclist they have a tendency to follow their noses and wander from one side of the path to the other in search of new and interesting smells to investigate or roll in - No that’s POO….come….good boy have a treat…..

If they see one of their friends they switch from walkies mode to omg it’s our friend and their pawrent who has other treats! Queue dogs running past their friends to the treat dispenser while their friend passes them and straight to me and my treat pocket.

Treats are great when we’re on a photo session as well as we can use them with other attention grabbers like a favourite toy or a funny noise to get our models attention, to sit nice, to ‘ask’ for a treat and raise their paw or to run towards us.

We do use treats sparingly though as good as they are for grabbing attention our dogs can become bored of their everyday, low value treats and decide they don’t want to look at the funny thing I’m holding in front of my face. For this reason a more high end treat is great, after all a lovely piece of rabbit foot or chicken neck is like offering us a fillet steak instead of a frozen burger.