We all love to celebrate a job well done and most of us are motived by the end reward or result. It’s the same with dogs, when they are given a task and they have succeeded, the amount of happiness clearly shows they are aware of their feat.
Research from Britain’s The Daily Mail discovered that dogs become happier when they earn rewards, instead of just being handed a treat for doing nothing. Two sets of dogs were given a task – the ‘experimental’ dogs and ‘controlled’ dogs to solve the puzzle in an arena.
Experimental dogs can only access the treat on the ramp as long as they successfully manipulated the three pieces of equipment that they had been trained to use. Control dogs can also access the reward when the puzzles were solved by their partner in the arena, irrespective of how they used the equipment.
After several runs of this test, it appeared that dogs with access to the treats are more excited to solve the puzzle, they showed visible, measurable excitement like wagging their tail vigorously however the other group of dogs, the ‘control’ group showed reluctance to do the task and were even hesitant to get the treat.
We’ve found many of our Pet Minders have encouraged rewards based training as an effective way of teaching our member’s dogs obedience.
Researchers have also found that dogs enjoy problem solving just like humans and that they would rather be rewarded for their efforts than being rewarded for nothing.