My dog only listens with treats! Moving Beyond Lures: First Principles Training for Reliable Behaviours

By Katrina Per-Carruthers

Sarah and I receive many emails from people concerned that if we use food in training that their dogs will become treat-dependent and only perform desired behaviours when treats are available. We also often get people very worried that their dog only listens with treats. While this concern is valid, it stems from a misunderstanding of the mechanics behind really good training. The issue is not the use of food in training, but rather the failure to transition from using food as a lure to using food as a strategic reinforcement strategy.

Luring and using food as reinforcement are functionally different approaches that produce very different learning outcomes. Understanding this difference and knowing how to systematically transition between them is what separates dogs who require visible food to perform from dogs who respond reliably to learned cues regardless of food.

What's the Difference Between Luring and Food as Reinforcement?

What is Luring? When you hold a treat in front of your dog's nose and move it to guide them into position (like holding a treat above their head and moving it backward to get them to sit as they follow the food with their eyes) you're using a food lure. The food comes first and leads the behaviour.

When using food as a reinforcer, you give a cue (like saying "sit"), your dog sits, you mark that moment with a clicker or "yes," and only then do you reach into your treat pouch and give them food. The food comes after the behaviour when it is used as reinforcer, not before as in a lure.

In behavioural science terms, luring uses food as an antecedent (something that happens before the behaviour), while using food as reinforcement means food is a consequence (something that happens after) of the behaviour. With luring, the movement and visibility of the food is actually what tells your dog what to do - it becomes part of your cue. When using food as reinforcement, your verbal word or hand signal is completely separated from the food.

While both methods involve food, the timing of when food is presented matters:

Luring: Food is Presented → Behaviour → Food Released to Mouth

Food as Reinforcer: Verbal Cue or Hand Signal → Behaviour → Marker (Yes or Click) → Food is THEN taken out of a pouch and fed.

Moving Past the Lure

Should I Use Lures?

Luring can be extremely useful when you're first teaching a brand new behaviour. In fact, we use it in class all the time! Unfortunately, if all we ever use is a lure, the food movement itself becomes necessary for the behaviour to happen.

My dog only listens with treats!

Owners often continue luring because it works (at first)! The behaviour looks "trained" because the dog reliably performs when you show them food. After only using a lure to train a sit, if you say "sit" with no food visible you will get... nothing. This gets interpreted as the dog being "stubborn" or "treat-dependent" when really the dog just never learned to connect the verbal cue with the behaviour.

This treat-dependency happens because of insufficient education about the specific techniques for fading a lure and transitioning to a verbal cue or hand cue.

Tools for Success: Treat Pouches and Markers

We can solve the treat-dependency by changing how we present food: keep it out of sight in a treat pouch and use a marker to bridge the timing.

When your dog can see food before you give a cue, the visible food becomes part of what tells them what to do. Your dog learns to respond to "visible food plus the word 'sit'" rather than just the word "sit" alone. When food isn't visible, the cue feels incomplete to your dog, and the behaviour you wanted won't happen.

Treat Pouches solve this mechanically. The food stays hidden in your pouch throughout the whole process. The sequence becomes: you say "sit" → your dog sits → you click or say "yes" → your hand reaches to the pouch → you deliver food. Your dog learns to respond to your verbal cue itself, not to seeing food.

Markers (like a clicker or the word "yes") do two important things. First, they let you mark the exact moment your dog does something right. Second, they clearly identify which specific behaviour earned the reinforcement. Together, concealed food and a marker create optimal conditions for developing stimulus control (the ability for your cue to work reliably in the environment) to your intended cue rather than to food visibility.

A common style of "clicker" - a marking device

While you can technically train without these tools, using them dramatically increases your probability of successfully fading lures and developing reliable cue responses.

For Advanced Trainers: You may wonder "won't the treat pouch also become part of the antecedent arrangement?" The short answer is yes! The long answer: Once your dog has reliable stimulus control to your verbal or hand cues, you can apply these same first principles to fade out the treat pouch itself. This involves implementing delayed reinforcement strategies where the treat pouch isn't present during training sessions and/or transitioning to environmental reinforcers. The key is systematic application of the same principles - just at the next level.

Characteristics of Reliable Behaviour

When first principles are understood (e.g.: how to fade a lure, how to use and apply reinforcers) and applied systematically, you'll see several outcomes:

1. Your Dog Responds Whether or Not Food is Visible

Behaviours come under control of your verbal or visual cue rather than food visibility. Put simply, your dog responds reliably whether or not they can see food. This is called stimulus control.

2. Behaviours Work in Different Places

Behaviours are maintained across multiple environments and in the presence of various distractions. This means your dog's "sit" works at home, at the park, at the vet's office, and even when there are squirrels around - not just in your quiet living room. In behavioural science, this is called generalization.

3. You Can Use Different Types of Reinforcement

Multiple types of reinforcement become effective. Food works great in many contexts, but play, praise, and access to things your dog wants can also maintain behaviour effectively. Practically, this means you can reinforce your dog with a game of tug, permission to sniff something interesting, or being released to go say hello to a friend - not just treats.

4. Your Dog Knows the Difference Between Cues

Your dog demonstrates clear discrimination between cues, responding appropriately to different ones. In other words, your dog knows the difference between "sit" and "down" and responds to each correctly, rather than just guessing or cycling through behaviours hoping one earns a reinforcer.

Conclusion

Food use in training does not inherently create dependency. What creates dependency is the failure to transition from food as a lure to food as a reinforcer and then transitioning from food as reinforcer to environment as reinforcer depending on end goals.

This transition requires understanding and applying specific behavioural principles: marker conditioning, cue transfer, concealed reinforcement delivery, and strategic contingency arrangement. These concepts derive from decades of research in learning theory and applied behaviour analysis.

When these principles are properly understood and applied, food becomes an effective tool for establishing behaviours that ultimately function independently of food visibility. This achieves two really important objectives: ethical, reinforcement-based training methods and reliable, cue-driven behavioural performance across multiple contexts.

For owners currently experiencing food dependency issues, the problem is not permanent. The solution lies in learning and applying systematic protocols for lure fading, cue transfer, and proper reinforcement delivery.

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