Sniffing for treats as a tool

Searching for treats on cue is a very useful behaviour for a dog to learn – it’s an example of a cusp behaviour, which means it broadens the dog’s behavioural repertoire and opens up the possibility for learning other behaviours. This is why I was doing it with Grace’s puppies from an early age so that they learn to eat outdoors and in as many situations as possible!

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to film a few examples. At first, I scattered treats to encourage engaging with the environment in a more focused way because this is a forest where Grace is used to a lot of activities with balls, dummies etc so she is expecting them, and because I’ve decided to take a break from all of them for the moment, she is not happy about it. Instead of barking at me, I give the dogs something else to do.

A few minutes later, two dogs and their human turned up (even though I was off the main paths) and Grace sprung towards them to shoo them off – something she does because there is food on the ground and quite often dogs will try to eat it, and partly because her experiences have conditioned her to proactively shield Astra from other dogs.

That short encounter wound her up, so I nudged her back into the sniffing activity to lower her arousal level. This is also a very useful tool because exciting things happen often if you’re a spaniel! A quick treat scatter can then help stabilise the mood. It’s also useful if you want to do some training, but your dog is distracted or too hyped up – among other things!

Caveat as always: I’m not a dog training professional, just sharing what we do in case it helps other people to see it.