I only took my new puppy to 1 show even though we regularly attend ringcraft too. At the show (LKA), all my preparation almost fell apart when she refused to show any interest in the treats I had brought. And at this stage, treats are a MUST HAVE with her! Thankfully my brother had a chunk of brownie in his pocket and it saved us for the few crucial minutes of judging.
I guess the excitement, all the dogs and people around had taken over my little dog treats. What do you guys use? Do you need to vary so that they don't get bored with them? What's your personal winner?
I have never used treats for any of my dogs. There is usually far too much going on in the ring to attract the dogs attention ;-) . Especially a males attention :-) . I know a lot of people that use home made liver cake (yukk!) as it is very smelly and tasty (for the dogs ;-) )
A really easy treat to take are Mattessons (sp??) sausages, especially the garlic ones, very easy to chop up into appropriate sizes. It's not quite as yucky as liver when you get bits under your finger nails :)
Ham is one of the only things that really switches my boy on. Boiled egg used to work too but doesn't seem to now! Other suggestions would be cheese, chicken, sausage, liver cake or if you can stand it plain liver, tuna cake...almost any kind of meat should work well.
Unless it winds her up too much and gets her TOO excited I'd suggest finding something that works and then the only time she ever gets it is when she's showing - keep it high value!
i use pieces of hotdogs chopped into tiny pieces, or liver cake when my mum makes it for her dogs i take some, cant bear to make it myself :) i dont give him hotdog at any other time, so it gets him very excited. also have used morrisons tripe sticks, theyre fab, are long thin sticks so easily broken into treat size pieces, took them to manchester as easier to prepare in a travel lodge than hotdogs!
quavers! great as I can put the empty packet in my pocket and the rustling gets her going. I can put anything in the packet and she gets just as excited (I'm a terrible mummy lol!) Angela
The only thing i try to avoid in the ring is something like cheese which can get sticky when warm and also anything crumbly. I'm not wanting to drop food all over the floor, not good.
We have done well on sausage, chicken, bacon and also liver cake..
Have just discovered Tesco sausage treat (looks like a dried sausage). Went to ringcraft last night with my boy & because we're going through the teenage phase of "all training & socialisation out the window" having a longish bit of treat to wave like a wand whilst moving was great. It's also quite easy to break bits off.
My advice is to have a variety of things to alternate on the day.
I use garlic liver cake that I make myself (It stinks the house out when its cooking!) and only use it in the ring but they all love it. I had run out at the weekend and bought a packet of beef jerky (dried meat) which they seem to like and I quite like it too!