Positive reinforcement is a combination of praise and training treats to encourage your dog to associate good behaviors with rewards. Since you’ll be giving very many of them a day, these training treats should be small. You don’t want to cause your dog to gain a ton of weight just because you’re trying to get them to sit on command. A training treat will usually be in the realm of two to ten calories each, and are usually small, soft morsels. The softness means they can safely scarf it down quickly to keep the focus on training instead of chewing. Whether you’re breaking in a new puppy or retraining a rescue, here are the best training treats for dogs.
Our first pick is one of a few freeze-dried options on this list. Freeze dried treats are great for a couple of reasons. First, they’re very limited ingredient, so you don’t have to worry about allergies.
Second, they’re considered high-value treats because they tend to smell strongly. High-value treats are good for situations where distractions are prevalent, because they grab your dog’s attention. These U.S.-made treats come in a variety of different flavors, mostly focused on livers.
Ingredient (Beef Liver flavor):
Beef liver
Flavors Available:
Wild Salmon
Beef Liver
Pork Liver
Turkey Liver
Chicken Liver
Bison Liver
Chicken Breast
Duck Liver
Lamb Liver
Calories per treat: Around 6 kcal Country of manufacture: U.S.A. Grain-free?: Yes
Jerky treats are just one step removed from dried animal protein, and these small squares make for excellent training rewards. Compared to the soft morsels, they make take a little bit longer to chew, but they offer a similar level of interest.
Being from the Wellness Core line, they are of course grain-free and generally limited ingredient. If you plan to teach your dog waiting tricks like putting this on their muzzle until you give a command, the flat shape will work well.
These are the first properly mini-sized soft training morsels on the list, with four ounces accounting for 150 treats. That’s 150 rewards for intensive training sessions. Three basic, inticing flavors using real meat as the first ingredient to help fuel successful learning.
First Six Ingredients (Bacon flavor):
Pork liver
Peas
Potatoes
Chickpeas
Vegetable glycerin
Cane sugar
Flavors Available:
Bacon
Bacon & Chicken
Chicken
Calories per treat: 1.6 kcal Country of manufacture: U.S.A. Grain-free?: Yes
When we first brought our husky mix home, he was quite the project. He had no training nor manners whatsoever and despite being quite smart, he appeared to have no interest in learning. We tried a bag of these treats to turn him around.
This relatively oversized bag contains 500 treats, which was nearly enough to get him to appreciate the basic tenets of sitting and keeping his paws on the ground when greeting people. We still use these from time to time, especially as a quick bite on walks, though we’ve largely moved to the next item on our list for our stubborn mutt. They offer both regular and grain-free versions to suit your needs.
First Six Ingredients (Bacon flavor):
Pork liver
Pea flour
Potatoes
Dried whole eggs
Glycerin
Sugar
Flavors Available:
Bacon
Beef
Chicken
Salmon
Grain-Free Chicken
Grain-Free Salmon
Grain-Free Duck & Bacon
Calories per treat: 3 kcal Country of manufacture: U.S.A. Grain-free?: Available
As far as high-value treats go, these Orijen freeze-dried treats are up there with the best. I specifically strongly recommend the Six Fish variety. They smell very strongly and help to redirect my dogs when the fixate on other dogs. They’re pretty pricey, but these pouches come with 105 high-quality treats.
These training treats are actually small, heart-shaped cookies. They’re entirely free of grain, soy, wheat, and corn and contain eight calories. That’s a little bit on the high side for a training treat, but these are scored in the middle to make them easy to split if you wanted.
These are billed as containing human-grade ingredients and a peek at the limited list confirms that you could probably get away with sneaking a few.
First Six Ingredients (Duck & Cherry flavor):
Chickpea flour
Duck
Tapioca
Molasses
Organic virgin coconut oil
Cherries
Flavors Available:
Beef & Blueberry (Pecks)
Chicken & Cranberry (Smooches)
Duck & Cherry (Nuzzles)
Fish & Pumpkin (Cuddles)
Calories per treat: 8 kcal Country of manufacture: U.S.A. Grain-free?: Yes
These PureBites treats offer another compelling freeze-dried option. We included the cat version on our best cat treats post because the simplicity of a single-ingredient treat is hard to beat. While cats require the high percentage of meat in their diets, that quality can increase the appeal for dogs in a training scenario. All ingredients are sourced from the U.S.A, which helps to explain the high price tag.
Zuke’s has made an appearance on our natural dog treats and our dog dental chews posts because of their natural ingredient lists and high customer ratings. There are six different flavors to choose from for these small training morsels.
All varieties are three calories or less and the one pound bag offers a good quantity of treats per package.
First Six Ingredients (Rabbit flavor):
Rabbit
Ground barley
Ground rice
Malted barley
Gelatin
Vegetable glycerin
Flavors Available:
Chicken
Duck
Peanut Butter
Pork
Rabbit
Salmon
Calories per treat: 2.2 calories Country of manufacture: U.S.A. Grain-free?: No
This option bridges the gap between the convenience and portability of small morsels and high-value treats thanks to their strong smell. The price is comparable to the Zuke’s above and the ingredient are similar though this option contains no rice a bit less barley.
That probably won’t make a huge difference either way, but if your dog decides they’re over the predominately-meat based training treats, you could try the cheddar cheese variety of these to change it up
We included Nulo in our best grain-free dog foods because their foods are formulated for dog health. New for the second half of 2017, the company has released these treats squarely aimed at training. In addition to having the compelling soft texture, they also include cherries and blueberries for an antioxidant boost.
My dogs loved the salmon treats and come running across the yard when I hold a few out out to them. They especially helped my new guy learn his new name upon entering our household.
First Six Ingredients (Salmon flavor):
Salmon
Dried ground chickpeas
Honey
Coconut glycerin
Gelatin
Natural flavor
Flavors Available:
Turkey
Salmon
Duck
Calories per treat: 2 kcal Country of manufacture: U.S.A. Grain-free?: Yes
Similar to the Shameless Pets offering, these training treats from Full Moon are made of human grade ingredients. The list of what’s in these reads like a recipe for something you might cook for your family and doesn’t even include glycerin like a lot of other brands.
All that, and they aren’t any more expensive relative to other brands. There’s only two flavors available, but these are definitely worth a look.
These treats offer something other dog training treats don’t: they’re sustainably made from upcycled food. That means that some of the ingredients in these treats were discarded from human food supplies for looking a little bug ugly, but were perfectly usable. About 20 percent of each package is made up of these sustainable ingredients.
Their Break an Egg and Lobster Roll (Over) varieties are especially good for dog training as they are strong smelling and therefore very compelling to dogs. My dogs go crazy for them. Or you could opt for the variety pack and try them all.
Milk-Bone might not make the most cutting-edge treats in terms of dog nutrition, but they do make treats that dogs find compelling, which is what you need in a training scenario. These tiny marrow-style treats should keep your dog motivated and are small enough to eat quickly and continue the training lesson.
Blue Buffalo offers a few different treats that could work as training treats, including their regular Bits treats, which are not grain free. If grain free is a requirement – and if you just want some really great training treats – look at their Wilderness line of Wild Bits.
You can get these soft treats in four and ten ounce packages in three different flavors.
Buckely makes a great option for small morsel-style training treats in their Trainers offering. Each treat has just over three calories, so continuously feeding these to reward behavior won’t cause your dog to gain too much weight in the long run.
There are no grains, wheat, corn or soy in these treats, so dogs with sensitivties should have no trouble with them.
