Our puppy (cocker x ess) is attending puppy obedience classes (today will be his third class) and last week the instructors discussed treats. Until then we'd just been making lots of fuss over Charlie when he came to us and that worked fine and he enjoyed the attention but we started to use treats as recommended and he loved them. Unfortunately he became quite mercenary (!) and expected a reward or would just look at us as though we're mad... Anyway, weve have laid off the treats for the last few days and he is back to normal but we'll probably have to use treats for the more challenging lessons/commands but don't want a repeat of our earlier experience. Any ideas would be appreciated.

This is the way with treat reward based obedience. The idea is that they have to work harder and harder to get the treat you don;t treat them every time all the time. When they're learing something new - fine but when it's "routine" don't.

hth

Pam n the boys