Using liver to make come the best cue your dog knows

Liver treats for recall training make sense because come is the cue that competes with everything outdoors. Squirrels and other dogs are the competition. So trainers save the strongest reward they have, a tiny bit of liver, for that one cue, and they pay it every time the dog arrives, not just when the recall was hard.

Why save liver for recall?

Every other cue happens close to you. Come asks the dog to leave something it chose, a smell or another dog, and run back to a person who may be about to end the fun. Whatever pays for that has to beat what the dog gave up.

If liver pays for every sit in the kitchen, it is ordinary by the time you need it at the park. Trainers hold their top reward back for exactly this reason. Our own scorecard rates the beef liver bag 5 of 5 for training value. That is our rating, not a test result, and recall is where we would spend it.

The parent guide covers how to find your dog's own top treat and how to run two levels of reward. See two-tier rewards in the training treats guide for the wider system this blog sits inside.

How small should a recall reward be?

Smaller than feels generous. The piece marks the moment the dog arrived, and the dog reads the moment, not the ounces. The freeze-dried pieces in our beef liver bag break apart by hand, so one medium piece turns into a pocketful of recall bits without a knife.

Break a day's worth at home over a bowl. Crumbs count as rewards too, and a dog that has just run across a field is not grading portion size. The bigger the dog, the more tempting it is to hand over a whole piece, and the less necessary it is.

The exception is the jackpot. When a dog leaves something it really wanted, trainers who use a jackpot hand over several small bits one after another rather than one big chunk. The repeated handing is the point. It stretches the moment and makes that recall stand out from the ordinary ones.

How do you pay a recall with liver?

Call once, in the voice you want to hear yourself using when it matters, and then stop talking. When the dog arrives, take hold of the collar or touch the harness before the liver appears. The payment happens at your body, not thrown toward the dog.

That collar touch matters more than the liver. A dog that learns come means a touch and then a treat is learning to arrive all the way in. A dog that learns come means a treat tossed from a distance has learned to arrive within tossing range and no closer.

Then let the dog go back to what it was doing, most of the time. If come always ends the walk or the game, the dog works that out quickly and starts weighing the trade. Pay the dog and let it go again. The liver is only half the deal; the other half is that coming back did not cost the dog the fun.

How do you keep recall practice inside the treat budget?

Recall practice can burn through liver faster than any other training, because it happens outdoors where everything is a distraction and every arrival gets paid. VCA Animal Hospitals puts treats at no more than 10 percent of a dog's daily calories, with the other 90 percent from complete and balanced food.

Small bits are the first answer. The second is to weigh out a day's practice portion once, so you know what that pile looks like and stop guessing. The portion guide does the arithmetic from your dog's calorie target and our label figure of 81.6 kcal ME per ounce. A day of recall practice becomes a weight you can put on a scale.

When practice runs long, trim a little off the next meal to make room. The liver still pays the recalls. Dinner just gets a little smaller.

When should liver stop being the only recall reward?

Once the dog is arriving every time in the easy places, the yard and the quiet end of the park, the reward can start to vary. Sometimes liver, sometimes the everyday treat or a release straight back to the game. The idea is that the dog cannot predict which one it is, so the cue stays worth answering.

Keep liver for the recalls that cost the most. The dog that left a deer trail, or came off a dog it wanted to meet, gets the jackpot. The dog that trotted in from a few steps away gets a pat and the everyday treat.

We are not going to promise an outcome here. Nobody honest can. What this does is keep come the best-paid cue the dog knows, and dogs tend to answer the cue that pays.