"That's' all well and good but the treat has to be higher value than the other thing (dog/person/squirrel etc)"


"You always have to work under threshold"


"What if you don't have treats?"


"You have to make yourself the most interesting thing in the world to your dog"


"I have to use that amount of treats forever?"


Ask yourself if you always do exactly what you want, or do the most interesting thing available to you at every moment of the day? When you are at work, would you rather, moment to moment, be doing something else? Or do you have the required learning to recognise that there is a time and place for somethings. Young children shout out and cry and can cause a ruckus in a restaurant or at a wedding. Older children less so and adults tend not to unless there is a really good reason. Why is this? Learning. Each has or has not learned which behaviours access reinforcement in each scenario. 


Working under threshold is desirable but not always possible. What happens if a dog suddenly appears from nowhere, do we or our dogs have the necessary skills and emotional regulation to deal with it and recover? Working where everyone is successful is great, but in order to progress we have to kindly build new skills to control our emotions (this goes for the human and the dog). There is a tonne in this, so please think critically about this point, it may cause a knee jerk reaction in some.


Does your boss wave a bag of cash in front of you or have you learned that a unit of work (week, month etc) earns a unit of pay? This is a behavioural contract, our dogs can easily learn them too.


Do we honestly think we can make ourselves more appealing to an adolescent male dog than an attractive female dog? Of course not, but your dog can have the necessary learning ton understand that the other dog (or human or squirrel) is unavailable to them. Dogs can easily learn rules and we don't need harsh methods to teach them. 


Remember the amount of feedback your driving instructor gave you when you were learning how to drive? Do you need the same amount of feedback now after X amount of years of driving? No, of course not, changes in behaviour are due to learning and we can use a multitude of reinforcers if we do learn how.


There are so many myths and so much false information out there perpetuated by many in relation to dog training. We can learn to critically analyse this information but it must be done from a position if knowledge.


Love and peace.