18/08/2026
Your reactive dogâs refusal to take treats outside is sabotaging your reactivity training. Here's what to do instead.
There's a couple of things on my tick list to check with dogs who won't eat food outside of the home:
1.â â If a body is too stressed, hunger literally shuts down. Humans aren't hungry in the middle of a car accident. That's because the body is pushing all of its resources towards fight or flight, so it shuts off non-essential mechanisms. So for very fearful dogs, checking whether or not they can eat is a great way to test if they are over threshold or overloaded with stress.
2.â â Hunger and digestion can be medical. As someone who has ulcerative colitis, I can tell you two things for sure: there were days where I couldn't have eaten a single thing beyond very plain potato because of nausea and also my IBD had very real impacts on my mood and behaviour, so I'd 100% be getting a vet check if your dog has an atypical relationship with food.
3.â â Are the treats you're using high enough value? If you can buy it in a supermarket, and it lives in a fancy packet, and it doesn't grow mould even if you have that packet for a year, it's probably quite low value as far as your dog is concerned. I use real meal wherever I can.
4.â â If you have had a vet check, you've tried high value treats, and it's 100% not because of chronic stress, then we get to be creative with our reinforcers. I once worked with a lovely dog who just wasn't food motivated or toy motivated and we taught her a recall where the reward was running along with her human when she got back to him, and it worked beautifully. We can use environmental reinforcers like sniffing too. What I will say is that in my many years of doing this work, it's only not been one of the first three things twice. So, yes, lower food and toy motivated dogs do exist, but that's very rarely actually the story.
Tell me in the comments if any of this resonates with you.
