Dutch Shepherd Forum

Hi everyone! I have been a member of the board for a while, but we finally got our first Dutchie thanks to the wonderful NADSR program. THANK YOU Trudy and Wenda!!! "Nashe" (previously known as Winston)came home to Pennsylvania from California on Friday. He is just over a year old and still a playful boy who is housebroken, crate trained and has basic manners. He knows "sit" and in 2 days we have taught him to sit before going in and out of our house. He gets along wonderfully with our 3 labs and already plays tug of war with 2 of them! He is not interested in chasing our chickens but is craaazzzzyyy for our cat. We are probably going to let her go on a little vacation to a friends house to keep her safe from Nashe until he gets settled in with us.
I need advice from all of you wonderful experienced Dutchie owners regarding training a dog with low food drive. I am interested in clicker training, but all of the information I have found uses treats to associate with the cliker and positive training. Does anyone have advice on books or websites that will help us out? Nashe really could care less about food!! First dog I've ever had who is this way! While we are focusing on fun and bonding for now, I need a plan to train......Please help
Carolyn

Welcome Carolyn. Thank you for adopting!
Does Nashe have any interests besides the obvious lack of interest in food? Are there any toys that light him up? My warped sense of humor had me thinking you could reward him with the cat, but that might not be a sustainable situation.

My older girl, Thalie, never had food drive but a high tennis ball and tug drive, so that was always her reward. My younger girl, Sadie, didnt have any drive at the beginning so it was alot of lovin for praise. I have never been one for clicker training, just because, i dunno, carriyng a little thing that makes noise dosnt fly with me. I do marker training, to me its the same. They learned so thats all i care about. As Sadie got older she did develop food and toy drive. Im with Judith though, why not tie the cat to a string?

Haha....the cat is a "mentally challenged" persian mix. She doesn't have the sense to stay away from Nashe. He does love his toys! He jumps to get at them when they're in my hand. I guess for now I will give him lots of time to bond and try not to expect too much from him until he is ready to want to please. We are starting basic beginning obedience in March. Thanks for the advise!

welcome and congrats!! Nashe is a beautiful boy and thanks for adopting him!! I saw his pic on NADSR fb page. They are so smart, eh?

NADSR has the best dogs!! - we adopted 2 from them.

Hi! Congrats on bringing a Dutchie into your family and thank you for adopting! Looks like you're joining the recent slew of adoptions into PA. Our Amber is in Philly, Will's Ace is in Willow Grove, PA (20 mins north of Philly) and you're in PA too! It would be awesome if we could all get together for a DS playdate! Are you guys ever in the Philly area?
We want to see more pictures! Please post!!!!

And regarding training, fortunately, Amber has high food drive but even higher ball/frisbee drive. So we can train using any of these things. Though, with ball/frisbee, we always have two of each, because once she's rewarded with the first ball, we need to entice her to give up the first ball and do the trick again to get the second ball. If we only had the first ball, she has a tendency of getting the ball and not giving it back to us, which would basically end the training there. Using the 2 balls, we also practice the "out" command, which makes her release the ball. We entice her to "out" the first ball by showing her that she could get the second ball as a reward.
I do like the cat as a reward tool, though I would preferably use 2 cats.

We live about 1 hr 15 minutes south of Philly....it would be fun to meet up! Nashe is doing extremely well considering all he has been through in such a short period of time. I am in awe of his athleticism and strength. He almost took me off my feet the first time he saw a cow in the pasture!! Right now we are concentrating on daily rides in the truck to visit family members or run errands so that he knows he is always coming back home here. Lots of affection, learning the property lines, playing with the other dogs. He is definitely stubborn when he's not interested in complying with some simple commands, but we are confident the willingness to please will come with bonding. The cat went to our friends house today, so that distraction has been removed from our home. He is very, very easily distracted. He has alot of puppy in him! Play time comes with 2 (out of our 3....one is slow with age) labs so there is chaos. Lots of tug of war! Our experience with training has primarily revolved around basic manners, obedience and hunting. I'm looking forward to learning how to exercise Nashe mentally as well as physically. He does have an aversion to water, but we're hoping once we get him into some play time with the labs in deep water, he won't be able to resist getting the toys. I have to figure out how to post pictures....he is quite beautiful!

besides toys and all that, someone said lots of affection. i've had 2 ds who were not necessarily motivated by food [ they both could say 'no thanks' whenever they felt like it ], so massage/ lots of exuberant affection/ up-close and personal interaction-play became the reward that was more effective than food could have ever been. their interest was a relationship - not food. it's great in the long-run: no treats expected for obedience and, in fact, more focus on signals from you.
having said all that, treats are very fast and convenient; you can probably train him to be somewhat treat motivated with the right treats. have you tried a variety of treats? DSs, in general tend to be less interested in the low-value [ especially non-grain-free stuff ] treats that so enthrall most other dogs. if you have not already experimented with such treats, try merrick ''texas hold'ems'' [lamb lung] or pro-treat freeze-dried beef liver for hi-value that is reasonable and convenient. for more balanced dietary effect, you could buy a bag of Kiwi Peak venison fish air-dried dog food and use it as treats. eventually you can probably graduate to normal treats like evo wild cravings. [ carrot bits might be worth a try in limited quantity.]
my DS of many years could not be motivated to do things for which he saw no point. once convinced that certain instructions and actions fit into the broad scheme of his world, he was more inclined to accept treats to grease the skids. so dialog was very important; once on-board, he would demonstrate that he had already mastered the instruction that he had refused to practice. he was VERY smart - perhaps that is Nashe's ''problem.''
congratulations for the great addition to your family - a family it sounds like any dog would be lucky to join!

Welcome! My old rottie/pit mix, Cedar, was both not food motivated, and blind... So things like chasing a ball had no appeal to him. During training I found the best rewards for him that he enjoyed working for were a squeaky-toy or a tug session. I used both of those in random alternation.

Thanks for the advice, everyone!

Welcome Any pics of your dog??

I am having trouble with my laptop, so that's the delay with pictures but I'm working on it!

Welcome

I got pictures added, finally! I posted them in "Whatever" board under "Nashe at home in Pennsylvania"

Dutch shepherds are to smart to train with treats best thing is to train with possitive reanforcment .spoiling them with treats works but turns them into spoiled treat whores a toy or game they like as a reward will give you a much better dog in the end

TIGER wrote:Dutch shepherds are to smart to train with treats best thing is to train with possitive reanforcment .spoiling them with treats works but turns them into spoiled treat whores a toy or game they like as a reward will give you a much better dog in the end

Wow...you sound like a great trainer.