At five months pregnant, I got a puppy.
I know. As several concerned friends, strangers, and even my doctor told me, I'm very brave. And sure, it's great practice. And yes, the pictures are going to be really cute.
Still, we knew we had to get serious about training, so our new dog Dolly could be calm and happy when her little sister arrived.
For Dolly, certain things came easily. It took about a week to teach her to walk on a leash as well as basic commands like sit, leave it, drop it, touch, and wait. But when she was four months old, we had to focus on more urgent behavior issues, like crate training, nipping, and jumping/slobbering on every stranger she meets, given we were soon going to have a small human she could easily knock over. As such, other basic commands fell to the back-burner, including down and stay.
That's where the Treat and Train from PetSafe came in handy.
What is the PetSafe Treat and Train?
While it's not a necessary tool in dog training, it does a remarkably good job of teaching down, stay, and place amid distractions with clear instructions for owners, and positive, treat-based reinforcement for dogs.
Importantly, it lets you remotely dispense treats, which means a creative and motivated trainer can use it for a whole host of other agility or obedience tricks where they can't be by their dog's side to hand out treats. At $119.95 on Amazon though, you'd expect some higher-tech features, like an app.
Setting up for training
The Treat and Train box comes with the actual Treat and Train itself (basically a treat dispenser), a remote control, a target for touch training, an instruction manual, and a DVD. Annoyingly, the treat dispenser takes four D batteries. I wished I could plug it in, although the batteries likely make it more portable.
The treat dispenser comes with the ability to dispense two different sizes of pet food. I noticed that neither size fit Dolly's food perfectly, which has two different types of kibble of different sizes. While some reviews noted this caused their treat dispenser to jam, I only experienced that once or twice. Still, depending on your treats or dog food, that might be a more consistent issue.
Other than that, set up is pretty easy. You load up the treat dispenser with treats, then use the instruction manual and DVD to guide your dog through a series of training games.
A useful, fun way to train
From the control panel, you can adjust the number of treats dispensed, whether treats are dispensed automatically or via a remote, and how frequently treats are dispensed, among other things. While the number of options on the control panel felt intimidating at first, after a day playing around with it, I could adjust settings easily, allowing me to adapt the Treat and Train to different training games, particularly ones not discussed in the manual.
The DVD and manual provide detailed instructions on what to choose of the above options depending on the trick you're teaching and how far along you are in the process. It covers five main training games: tone means a treat is coming, touch targeting the provided target with the dog's nose, lie down and stay at a specific place (in Dolly's case, this was a rug), race to the rug on cue, and lie down and stay in place despite distractions. It also comes with other training games that don't use the Treat and Train system, including basic commands, like come when called.
The DVD is helpful... but an app would be even better
While the instruction manual walks users through each training game, the DVD provides more detail and helps you see the correct positioning and timing of treats.
This was my main issue with the Treat and Train, though. My computer doesn't have a CD drive, so I had to dig up an external one to watch the DVD. I assume most people won't even have that. I wished the Treat and Train came with an app to control the feeder without a remote while also providing instructions and videos. This way, you wouldn't have to stop training to flip back and forth between the manual and DVD if you're confused.
It also takes a long time to walk through the down-stay training. That's because, in order to reinforce that a dog needs to stay down for extended periods of time, you progressively increase the time between treats. You start with treats coming every three seconds, so the dog doesn't have time to move between treats, then to five seconds between treats, then seven, then 10, and so on, until eventually, the dog has to stay down for an entire minute before the next treat comes. And you practice each interval for a minute at a time, five times each. It took us about three days to work our way through all the interval.
It gets boring. Still, by the end, Dolly was a pro at down and place — impressive progress for a puppy frequently distracted by a feather.
The training itself proved highly effective with Dolly. Before we started, she wasn't great at down-stay. She would get it right about half the time but the other half, would stare at us quizzically in sit. Extremely adorable, but missing the point. After a week walking her through the various down-stay exercises in the manual, she was a pro. By the end, she had even started mastering place. She was so good that when two strangers came over to deliver a piece of furniture, Dolly laid down in her place without needing any treats. Normally she'd be jumping on said strangers for kisses and pets. Best of all, I could send Dolly to her place and answer the door 20 feet away, ensuring she stayed in her place by continually dispensing treats with the remote. This ability to multitask is the machine's best feature.
She also seemed to have fun. When we brought out the Treat and Train, she'd wag her tail and rush over to the rug we used as her place. She doesn't show as much enthusiasm for regular training. I suspect it's because we used the Treat and Train with meals, which meant she received tons of food every time, unlike her regular training sessions (the girl loves to eat).
I do wonder how Dolly will do with place training without a Treat and Train. The manual comes with instructions on how to phase it out, though, and since everything else it's taught Dolly has worked I'm pretty confident that will, too.
Add to cart?
While the Treat and Train isn't completely necessary to train a dog, its ability to dispense treats from a distance adds some flexibility to your training repertoire, allowing you to reward behavior without needing to stand right next to your dog. And while I didn't try to use it for tricks beyond what the instruction manual describes, it'd be easy to mold the system to what you want to do, as long as you know the basics of positive reinforcement and clicker training.
I could see this being useful with agility training, for example. You could also use it with crate training since it'd allow you to dispense treats when a dog is calm and well-behaved in their crate without opening the crate door.
That said, I enjoy giving my dog treats from my own hand. With the Treat and Train, instead of looking to me for praise and rewards, she looks to a machine. I view training as, in part, a bonding session for Dolly and me, where we learn to trust each other and she learns to listen to me. And that, I think, is something no machine can replicate.
