Its great when your dog is food motivated.

They respond to your commands and the come in attentively waiting for that yummy piece of food.

But what if your dog doesn't respond to food...is all hope gone?

Absolutely not.

Every dog is different and they will have different motivations and some dogs are not driven by food.

Should you be worried?

Absolutely not

How do you work around this?
You find what motivates the dog and make this the reward, in some cases your dog might find it more rewarding to have some times to sniff and explore the world around them after they have done some training or have walked on a loose lead.
Your dog may prefer to have fuss and a little cuddle.... so why not use what they will find more rewarding?

Yesterday when working with the awesome Marvin a Bosnian rescue dog it was clear that treats were not a motivator for him probably because food is not exciting to him this could be due to his breeding and previous experiences.

What was more rewarding however was to sniff the environment around him and we reinforced this after every aspect of training which in this case was reactivity so after each recognition of a dog without a reaction Marvin was given time to sniff which in turn is his reward and this helped to reduce the fixation he was having towards other dogs.

Find your dogs motivation and watch how more exciting you become.

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