Enhancing drive - Page 1

Hi all,

This is just a general question to board members.

What are peoples feelings on enhancing the food drives your young puppy has from 8 weeks+, even if they are already greedy, do you still continue to condition them, If so what techniques do you use ? Is it important for your puppy to work for every bit of his food from day one ? Or do you not worry about sustaining the strong food drive until later on in the puppies life ? Just a question ive been asked and wondered about myself. Open to discussion.

Thanks,

DSV

We personally let a puppy enjoy being a puppy. A bond with their owner/trainer is what I've seen make a good pair-up shine in training/trialing later. If you have a puppy who's eager to please and loves to eat, enjoy it and gently cultivate that.
I've never had an issue getting a puppy/young dog even with poor ball drive food-motivated. Offer them something they really like, and if they're hungry when its being offered, they'll go for it. Some people withhold feeding on training days to enhance a dog's food drive, but not while a puppy. Puppies need their nutrition.  Personally, I've never needed to withhold meals to encourage food drive for training. My best trained bitch works for praise, not food, anyhow. Treats is used only to clean up performance prior to a trial.

I have to agree with katjo,

Let a puppy be a puppy,  my dog's work for praise also.   Treats are for special occasion's.

If your puppy's are eating good now don't mess with that.  There is always time for things to change and thing's always change, so be glad for the now.

Let the puppy be puppy, work on focus and drives in moderation, don't worry about it too much at that age. I withold food for 12 hours and up to 24 hours prior to training I train once a week. Last meal is on 5 p.m on saturday and next one at 3 p.m on sunday. Never had problem with that approach. Even young wolfs in the wild don't eat every day, I think is a good idea to let the system reset. I start this at about 9-10 weeks, but than I feed my dogs at that age only twice a day rather than 3 times.

Young puppies need their nutrition, so don't make him work too hard for what he needs naturally.  Let him grow up a bit first.