Is your kai food motivated?
Hi folks,
I have talked with several akita people and it seems like it's common, though not happening with everyone of course, that the akita is not foodmotivated, and it got me thinking, how is it for the kai? So I'd like to hear from as many kai owners as possible...
Is your kai food motivated (for training)??
Training my akita Eowyn when she doesn't give a S*** about any treats or toys, is a real challenge, and I wanted to know upfront, if I can expect the same from a kai. I am aware that it is still a NK, but if they like food, it is considerably easier to train them in my opinion. I have only had personal experience with a KBD, which is not a NK, but still a spitzbreed. She will do ANYTHING for a treat!! So even though she definately has a mind of her own, teaching her things are quite easy
I have talked with several akita people and it seems like it's common, though not happening with everyone of course, that the akita is not foodmotivated, and it got me thinking, how is it for the kai? So I'd like to hear from as many kai owners as possible...
Is your kai food motivated (for training)??
Training my akita Eowyn when she doesn't give a S*** about any treats or toys, is a real challenge, and I wanted to know upfront, if I can expect the same from a kai. I am aware that it is still a NK, but if they like food, it is considerably easier to train them in my opinion. I have only had personal experience with a KBD, which is not a NK, but still a spitzbreed. She will do ANYTHING for a treat!! So even though she definately has a mind of her own, teaching her things are quite easy
Comments
Makes live a whole lot easier
All 4 of our Akita Inu would work for food. They really loved treats. Were our Akita Inu snappy obedience champion Border Collies, no, but they would mos def do what we asked if we offered them a treat. Many would do what we asked for simple "happy talk" too. I found the breed pretty willing to please.
Same applies to our Kai Ken, some are very snappy for treats. Others, like Kona and Akashi, are less snappy. But Kona, like our 4 Akita Inu, is still more likely to do something for a treat than without a treat.
Same for Shikoku: Kaiju and Loa are crazy for treats, Cho Cho and Ahi a bit less. But still, Ahi and Cho Cho are more likely to do things for treats than without treats.
In training dogs, one really has to consider the environmental stimuli when training with treats as the environment can override the value of the treats.
This is the struggle we have with Kona and Ahi, they will work for treats here in our home but not at all once we get to class - because they are too distracted by the trainer or the other dogs. Ahi will work for the trainer's attention more than she will for treats, while Kona is past his threshold and will not work for anything unless we reduce some of the stimuli, but Kona will work if he is moving.
If your AA is not taking treats when you are working with her, I would reduce distraction. Find a place where she will work for treats, get her working there and then up the criteria by adding a bit more distraction. We had to do this with our CO, here at home they would do anything for a treat, but in public its a bit more of a struggle as their food-drive is overwritten by their need to monitor the environment, which is volatile in a new/different/public place.
It also helps if they are hungry before you work them as that ups the value of the treat.
All this applies to Kai Ken too. We've had a good number of Kai come through here now, and each one had a different level of food motivation. So I would shy away from labeling the breed as either "food motivated" or not.
Also, I'm sure how biddable the breed/dog is plays huge role too, generally speaking Kai are less biddable than, say, a BC, GSD, or CC, but some of ours are still very easy to train and surprisingly snappy with our requests.
The one blanket statement I will make about the Kai Ken breed, with training, and this applies to Caucasian Ovcharka too (and maybe even ANY LGD breed), is that you need to keep in mind their attention to detail. Our Kai are very sensitive to change, so each request (command) needs to be preformed in the same exact way (same hand movement, facial expression, body posture...) as any change in one of those (even very small ones) will appear like a different request to them.
So, with the breed, we have found that one needs to spend a lot more time building the foundation before upping the criteria as that helps them generalize the "commands" more easily... Remember the three "D"s - Distance, Distraction, Duration. Only up the criteria of one at a time, and just a bit, in the beginning.
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Sorry for the bad phrasing of the thread title. Ofcourse Eowyn is foodmotivated to some degree, but very low. Even alone in the house she will not even look twice at any treat I've given her, other than 2 bites of cheese and a little ham. She gets very easily bored with a type of food. So far she has not been willing to perform in any way, but I had forgotten about location, so I will try going with her in a small, boring room and see if I can get her to sit or make eyecontact for some treats and work from there. Thanks Brad, that one will help me I'm sure!
Mei has never been in a group class because she would be way too distracted to work for treats. Her training has been one on one with me or my father. I can work with both dogs at the same time, and sometimes I think it's better because at first Mei would watch Koda to figure out what I was saying. We had a bit of a language barrier and if she was taught hand signals, they were different than what I do because the girl was clueless.
I would love to say that my perfect Koda was always perfect, but he actually got kicked out of his first training class. *sigh* The first day of class, he seemed to do fine with the initial commands, working well for cheese, but then the trainer did it. She walked up to Koda and grabbed his leash from me. No one had ever done this, and Koda could not contain his total shock and utter disgust with not only someone grabbing his leash that he didn't know, but me allowing her to do it. It was so quick, that I didn't have time to respond. After that, nothing worked. I couldn't get his attention, and he wouldn't take treats from me. She pushed him way passed his comfort zone. We went back to the class another time, but I then took him out of the class. The instructor had no interest in working with "the wild dog".
After that, we did one on one training sessions. They cost more, but were well worth it. Koda loved being on a field working. He was able to focus, and felt within his comfort zone. He is now a great with training, and likes the woman we train with. He has gone back to do group classes, but with the same trainer. He trusts her.
In the home, they are both great with working for treats.
I have one of each, a very food motivated dog no matter what, and another who is food motivated at home, but loses food motivation away. He will still work and focus away from home if I give praise, but it might take over a half an hour before he will eat even the most yummy treats while training away from home.
@Brego_mellon_nin - your last line is exactly what you need to do. Decrease the distractions and increase the focus. That will help a lot. Teach her to look and watch you. Then move to a slightly more distracting room. Do same exercise.
Because as Brad said, some dogs, if they lose their attention, are hard to get back into focus.
I was telling my neighbor a couple of months ago this story. He picked up a puppy and commented on how he felt like she wasn't bonding with him. He had only had her for a couple of weeks. I remember when I picked up Koda from the airport. Honestly, the first thing we both did was look at each other like who the heck are you? There was no instantaneous bond. He was cute, and he liked that I fed him and played with him, but we were both foreign to each other. It really took a couple of months to see a genuine relationship between us.
Yes I remember you telling about that idiot trainer grabbing Koda's leash. I'm sorry he got that bad experience, that trainer must be a real jerk! Fortunately my trainer is very good with Eowyn, though she cannot manage to get Eowyn to take treats anymore than I can, but Eo loves her
Anyway, I was talking about kai. When I asked Tina, who has 2 kai here in Denmark, she also said that she has one of each, a very food motivated kai and the other one is rather picky and not so easy to excite
I guess I will not know how my future kai will be till I have him in my hands...
And yes, the bond takes a while to build and I have not yet done a lot with training, but I will now.
That reminds me of when I picked Rakka up. I drove 8 hours to pick her up from her previous owner, and we interacted a little, and then I took her in the car and headed home. That's when she started acting weirded out. She leaned as far away from me as she could and shot me sideways glances every once in a while.
But at least she warmed up to me faster than to Noah. When we first got Rakka, she would go crazy barking at ANY man she saw, so Noah was no exception. For a week or so, every day when Noah came home from work there was ten minutes of barking, then finally she'd calm down, and relax after a while, but it was the same thing every day as if she'd never seen him before. And it took a long time before she wasn't jumpy around him. Now they're buddies!
Mei's the acception to this. She walked out of the kennel. Went right up to me. Jumped on me, and put her nose right on mine. She stared at me for a good 3 minutes staring deeply into my eyes. Then she decided I was cool and sat next to me. She walked right to my car, hopped in, and was like yeah I got a new family! She sang the whole way home. Red said he had never seen anything like that. It was pretty intense.
Anyone want to chime in? Mirra was kinda the same way - and we made it through that just fine, it just took a little longer with Mirra than it has with Ki because Ki is extremely food motivated no matter where we go!
Thanks!
We have available to us organic grass fed cow livers - so i bake them and chop them into bits... those are the extra extra goodies... the others that seem to work as well at home (the liver ones have to be kept in the freezer to preserve them longer so I don't normally take them to town) are the Wellness Puppy treats. I split those into 4's and they are a great training treat...At home the reaction to these two treats is very similar but now, in town - Kunai basically turns his nose up and wants to explore everywhere we go - and "sit" or "come" is like, "sit? what sit mean? oooo - that looks fun! let's go there..." lolol Plus, he is only 7 months so I'm sure we are hitting some ornery adolescent stuff. I could always get Kitora's attention with a treat though - she's mostly pulled out of adolescence behavior wise...
Food motivation is.. iffy. depends on what I'm asking them to do. Doesn't help that they're picky. I have to make ground beef patties and mix them with rice or oatmeal and freeze them, then use them as treats.
They like functional rewards more (I think that is what it is called?). If they sit or do something they can sniff a mailbox, roll in a certain patch of grass, walk through a mud puddle, dig a little area..
Play is also iffy as a reward..
Praise & Petting ? Whats that ? Obviously not good enough. Tried raising its value by not petting / sweet talking unless they did a trick, or giving treats as i was petting so petting would be positive and what not.. Nope lol.
To hear that the majority of Kai are treat motivated makes me excited.