Excitable Dog Choking On Food Rewards

[WildatHeart]

I've just started using my OH's mothers dog to teach her to get a beer out of the fridge to finish off my course assessment. THis dog has HUGE food drive which is great, but she's not really swallowing the food. Rather, she INHALES it and coughs and splutters and usually the treat comes back up which she quickly scoffs back down. I was using small dry biscuits and changed to small balls of wet food to see if that helped (looks just like these in this link Treats) and she sounds like she is going to die. I wait for ages in between treats but it doesnt make a difference. Any ideas?

Edited October 21, 2009 by WildatHeart

[Aidan]

A lick of cream cheese?

[sas]

I've seen people do cream cheese and so forth on a spatchula...could that work?

[huski]

Yep, the spatula or have you tried making the soft, wet treats smaller? If I was using the 4legs or chunkers I would cut them into much smaller pieces (into quarters most likely). Daisy will cough up dried treats when we are training too but if I use small enough pieces of soft meat she's fine.

[WildatHeart]

I've seen people do cream cheese and so forth on a spatchula...could that work?

mmm i might loose the spatula.... And funny you should say spatchula as that is what I haave been using the last few days as my tagetting item lol. (its all i had)

But great ideas I might try that. Forgot to mention she's a lab, the treats Im giving dont appear to be as big as the ones on the link.

Edited October 21, 2009 by WildatHeart

[TangerineDream]

I've used cheese held tightly in my fingers so that it literally had to be licked, slurped, sucked out from between my fingers in small pieces to slow Tango down because he used ot be the same....

[Jigsaw]

Soft food is much better for a dog that inhales treats! You could try raw mince in your hand too so that it has to be licked off. Pretty eeeww but not much different to being covered in labrador slobber when training! Another option if you're using a spatula as a target is to move to a squeeze food tube, available from some camping shops also CleanRun has some as well. You could also try to teach her "gentle" in taking her food rewards ie not allowing her to take the food until she is settled and more calm so she doesn't inhale the treat and your hand!

[Kelpie-i]

We've used a tomato sauce squeezie plastic bottle filled with cream cheese for dogs wearing muzzles (to get through the gaps) and cheap around $2 from the $2 Shop, so I can't see why you could not use this if you are outdoors and don't want to keep dunking a spatula into the cream cheese bottle.

Cheese sticks also work well as you can mush in your hand...

Treat only need to be small and if using a solid piece of food, it should be no bigger than the size of your finger nail on your little finger (provided you don't have large fingers and/or long nails )

[WildatHeart]

i lick the bottle ideas, thanks guys