My Aussie is almost 2 years old, and training him has been a real challenge. He’s incredibly smart, but he has no desire to listen to us. I had Aussies growing up, so I expected some of this behavior, but I’ve never had a dog that isn’t food motivated at all. We even had to use smoked salmon to potty train him, and even that lost its appeal after a while (luckily, the potty training stuck before he got bored of it). He just doesn’t care for food.
We noticed that he begs for string cheese when we eat it on the couch. We try to avoid rewarding begging, but he rarely begs, so it was surprising that he was interested in it at all. I’ve tried every meat or peanut butter-based treat I can find, and nothing worked. We even gave him cheddar cheese, but he spat it out and rolled around in it. He does this with any food he doesn’t like, like bananas and cheddar cheese.
But string cheese… it’s like magic. He’ll do every trick in the book for even the smallest piece. He doesn’t try to herd the cats, he heels, he stops, he looks at me when I say “look,” and loose leash walking has become his favorite pastime. Our evening walk today was entirely off-leash, and he heeled the entire time.
Normally, he would have been reactive when another dog came bursting through their front door onto the sidewalk. I was nearly having a panic attack because that’s never happened when he’s been off-leash, but he didn’t even flinch. The other dog didn’t matter. All that mattered was the string cheese in my hand and the fact that I told him to sit and stay.
If I had known that all he wanted was string cheese, I would have saved myself so much frustration.
My dog eats carrots, but just small, rough carrot pieces. He doesn’t like meat, chicken, peanut butter, or any other treat we’ve bought, but he’ll do anything for carrots.
The carrot thing blows my mind. This is my third dog, and I was constantly rolling my eyes when others mentioned how much their dog enjoys vegetables. Now I have a dog who begs for carrots, celery, mushrooms, and apple slices…so amusing.
We planned a weekend wedding to go to the week after I received my pet. My buddy took him over the weekend and introduced him to string cheese. He was like an addict on crack. It made potty training easy. However, for the remainder of his life, we had to spell the term in our home or risk him parking himself in front of the fridge. “Honey, do you want c-h-e-e-s-e on your burger?”
Same! My cattle dog mix loves string cheese, so I use it entirely for training. In fact, we tested it and he preferred it to meat.
My dog can be very leash reactive to other reactive dogs (essentially, if the other dog does not react, he does not, but if the other dog pulls and barks, he replies with “OH NO YOU DIDNT!!!”). Anyway, as long as I have cheese, he will ignore any dog, no matter how obnoxious. anything’s not worth anything without cheese.
The best part is that I enjoy it as a snack, so I usually keep some on hand for either of us.
Our children enjoy it as well! They even recognize the difference in the sound of the drawer in the fridge where we store the string cheese and rush in when we open it.
Also, it works well as a pill pocket if you ever need to give your dog medication.
String Cheese! That is something we will have to try. So far, stinky dehydrated fish has proven to be our 7-month-old GSD’s favorite treat! It stinks, but it’s the only thing we’ve found that works. I wouldn’t mind some neutral cheese haha.
If you want a cheaper alternative (though it will stink up your hands a little), drained canned tuna plus a tiny bit of flour to bind/dry it out is like dog crack at my house, and it’s especially useful when you’re training and only need little portions at once. However, cheese still appears to be a better option.