Why I Stopped Guarding the Reward

I didn’t set out to change how I was teaching my dogs “impulse control” and focus around rewards.  It was a process that slowly evolved over time as I got better and better at splitting things down. The dogs’ frustration levels went down. They stopped "testing” to see if they could really get at the food. And within a few years, I just found that I was no longer doing the things that were in my actual handouts. 

One of the most basic exercises in dog training involves holding the reward out in our open palm. Traditionally training this involved a lot of negative punishment: closing our hand over the food the moment the dog moved towards it.

It was effective. Dogs learned not to get the food in our hand, or when on the ground right next to our foot!

But I started to shift away from that.

I placed an emphasis on rapid feeding and rewarding what I want. Got better at not waiting for them to make a mistake and then covering the food. Instead, I started with a higher hand and a fast rate of rewards. Predicted where they would "fail" and already had a treat out to redirect them.

One of the biggest problems I was initially trying to solve was “testing.” Dogs who generally knew the game, but always had to do that quick testing rep of booping the hand or seeing if they could lunge to get that cookie before the handler said anything. They would be great on the next reps, if the handler was successful in covering up the food. But the method of continually closing our hand and covering the food had a whole bunch of dogs learning to do advanced calculus and figuring our speed, arm length, and just how much distance there needed to be before they could beat us! 

I was also encountering a lot of dogs who struggled with stillness. They would return from a cookie toss and start offering all sorts of behaviors, often a lot of backing away from the reward and then pouncing back towards it if the reward didn't come fast enough.

Zen Hand

And as I gradually moved away from thinking about guarding the reward to thinking about how can I reinforce and redirect the dog, I started to see changes. The dogs were becoming more settled around the rewards. They weren't arching around any distractions on the ground in their attempt to avoid them. They were confident in their ability to know how to win each challenge.

They also started to get a whole lot more confident in stillness and knowing that pauses didn't mean they were wrong and should frantically offer something else!

Pretty soon, my "zen hand" started to become an actual cue to the dogs to not only look away from the food but to look at me and wait patiently.

This is what my foundation training looks like now. Little Helo is showing one of his early lessons with "zen hand" where he gets a bunch of rewards for not moving to my hand, and a quickly fed free cookie to redirect him back to the target if he makes a mistake. My hand could have started a bit higher to make it easier! At the end I'm just starting to get some eye contact where he chooses to look away from the reward and look at me:

Why this matters beyond zen hand

The real goal isn't just a dog who doesn't mug your hand. It's a dog who knows how to win. This foundation of looking away from the reward to get the reward is what leads to the dog that can willingly leave the reward behind in order to earn it. Even when the reward is on the ground and unguarded, they opt in.

There's a big difference between a dog who has learned through frustration that they can't just steal the cookie, and a dog who has conquered tons of these puzzles and knows exactly how to win it. There's no frustration or anxiety in it, just confidence.

That's what my Bye Bye Cookie class is built on.

Bye Bye Cookie opens for registration May 22nd and starts June 1st on Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. If you want a cleaner foundation for rewards (food AND toys!) at a distance, come join me!