Which training food should you get? Treats vs Training Food

​Have you ever stood in front of the treat shelves at the pet store looking for a training treat and were utterly overwhelmed by the broad selection that is offered there? There are so many options to choose from regarding size, flavors, ingredients, and more. So, which one should you get to use as a reward during training?
My answer is none.
And here is why: I see treats as Candy. When you do a training session with your dog, you should give a lot of rewards to create a strong reward history with the behavior your dog is performing. Giving that many treats (Candy) to your dog is a very unhealthy diet. It’s like eating a bag of Starbursts or Reeses every day. In my training system, I almost always start off by making training time meal time. Hence, the dog is working for its meal. When you do that, you have to give your dog something nutritious, and we all know candy is not nutritious. That is why I recommend using Training Food. Very rarely can you use your dog’s regular food for training because it just doesn’t have enough value to motivate your dog to work for that. After all, the reward you are using needs to have some higher value for your dog to make a reward. Also, when using kibble, you will experience that it is complicated to deliver the tiny morsels quickly and precisely without dropping any, which creates a huge distraction and redirects the dog’s attention to the dropped food on the ground. My criteria for the edible training reward are:

• It’s easy to deliver
• It’s quickly eaten by the dog
• It’s nutritious

In my experience over the years, Bil Jac Frozen Dog Food, Freshpet, and Red Barn Dog Food Rolls are what work best and fulfill all those criteria. All these choices are real dog food and can be formed or sliced into good-sized pieces that are easy to deliver. Hence, they can be a substitute for the dog’s meal, especially in the beginning when we give a lot of rewards for each behavior the dog performs. The dog also quickly eats these training foods because they don’t require much chewing. The only downside of these training foods is that they all require refrigeration and need to be used quickly so they won’t go bad.
Of course, if your dog has to be on a special diet or has any kind of food allergies, you will need to thoroughly study the ingredients list to decide, if these are good for your dog. In that case, you can always use cooked chicken or meat cut into bite-sized pieces. 
Now, you are probably wondering what about treats and whether you need to throw away all the treats that you have in your pantry. Nope, not so fast.
Treats are great for potty training and crate training and to have generally in your pocket to give your dog a “surprise” reward whenever they are doing what you ask them to do, like coming when called and so on. Since treats don’t require any kind of refrigeration, you can literally stash them all over the house in convenient places. My favorite treats to have in reach are freeze-dried beef liver, Bil Jac liver treats, and soft jerky treats that I can break into smaller pieces for multiple rewards. These are easy to put in my pocket and don’t leave many crumbs or greasy residue. 
So next time you go shopping for a training reward for your dog, you may want to consider something nutritious and look less at the calories