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FINE DINING!
In the training world I believe the phrase, fine dining, was coined years ago by Leslie Nelson. It refers to giving a steady stream of delightful treats to a dog for a great performance, and I especially love to use this when working on recalls.
My own dogs are learning a super-strong recall with a whistle as their cue. We often work in a 40-acre field where they are free to romp off leash. Sometimes they are mere specks in the distance. So when they come high-tailing it to me the instant I say COME or when they hear the whistle, I want the consequences to be really meaningful. I reserve the most delicious treats for this training, like freeze-dried liver, and they receive at least 10x the usual amount as a reward.
Fine dining refers specifically to doling out the treats in fairly quick succession, but one at a time. I pair this steady stream of treats with plenty of heartfelt praise. And I do think the experience is more meaningful than if I delivered that exact same number of treats all at once, because so many dogs will snarf them up in a nanosecond and then the experience is over.
There’s also a really interesting study about large magnitude rewards, if you’d like to dive deeper into this topic, and it can be accessed here.
Have you used fine dining with your own dog? Do you feel it makes a positive difference?
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5 Replies
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YES! Though, I just call it a “jackpot” – Same, or different, from what you are discussing here?
Interestingly, my angel-dog Vizsla would light up way MORE when I scattered the food to sniff out, than if I fed her by hand. Considering how much she was into scent, that made total sense. The excitement of the “hunt” was the only reward that began to compare with her actually hunting/running the other direction.
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@catherine , yeah, I bet some dogs derive extra reinforcement when they have to use their nose to sniff out the tossed goodies, or even chase thrown goodies, and both forms of delivery extend the length of the reinforcing event.
So I would say the difference between a jackpot and fine dining is the you are purposely drawing out the length of time that it takes to consume the super-sized number of treats. If a person just presents a fistful of treats to the dog as a jackpot, many dogs will consume those in a nanosecond.
And that linked article talks about how they discovered that large-magnitude rewards lengthen the dopamine hit the animal receives (in the study, it was mice) which in turn sharply speeds up their learning. Really, really interesting!
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That time element is really important, and a very easy thing to implement. Solid gold tip!
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That’s just pretty to watch and poetry!
Thank you for sharing. They are delightful to watch eat their “fine dining”.
I don’t know if I use this exact method, but I sometimes deliver a scatter feed jackpot in the yard for a really nice walk with two pups I walk daily.
It seems like Bean and Bond would give the experience Michelin stars! What fun. It should be fun, after all!
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Michelin stars — I love it, @bernerlabreclectus ! ⭐
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