Why Positive Training is not Bribery | Victoria Stilwell

To truly understand why food is so powerful, you must first understand the influence it has on the dog’s brain.

Food has the power to not only enhance a dog’s ability to learn but also helps a dog overcome fear or anxiety by raising the levels of dopamine in the brain and stimulating the desire to seek or move towards the food reward. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a major role in reward-driven learning and helps regulate movement and emotional responses. If a dog is presented with food before he reaches a high stress level in the presence of a stimulus that scares him, a positive emotional response ocurs. There are circuits in a dog’s brain that encourage seeking or hunting behaviour and circuits that elicit the fear response. When you present food to your dog you turn on his seeker system, effectively turning off the fear. Turning on the thinking brain deactivates the emotional brain, enhancing a dog’s attentiveness with positive motivation and allowing him to move into a calmer state where learning can take place. Therefore, because food is incompatible with fear, using food treats for teaching is incredibly valuable, especially when it comes to modifying a dog’s anxiety and stress.