PetSafe Teach & Treat Remote Reward Trainer Dog Toy

I have an adolescent Border Collie who is definitely pushing my patience now that he's in his "teenage" years. We're constantly on the hunt for ways to stimulate his mind and this treat and train is so versatile on that front. If your dog has separation anxiety, definitely get this! While you're at it, check out Susan Garrett's podcast on how to approach separation anxiety using the treat & train. This product can be used in so many ways. It even comes with a very informative booklet teaching you how to teach your dog various things (ie., down stay, sit stay, etc). We put this on the top of our dog's crate (wire crate type) so that when he's showing good behavior, I can press the button on the remote that this comes with to reward him. We keep a giant snuffle mat in there so then he goes sniffing away in the mat to find the treat! Great way to reduce boredom on days you can't give as much attention to your fur baby. The treat and train lasts a good while on batteries, which makes it ultra portable, so you can train ANYWHERE!! It also comes with two different disc things so that you can use different size treats. We have rarely had problems with it jamming too depending on type of kibble/treats. To avoid this, we drop the treats through the hole size we choose to "filter" out the larger pieces that might get stuck. It takes some time, but saves any potential issues of jamming. If we bake treats for training, those are perfect and require no filtering (like his kibble since they are all not perfectly same shape). The remote works very well and has a large range, which is wonderful because I can reward him for zero barking as I'm walking around/getting ready to leave for work. You can set various volumes for the noise it makes every time a treat is dispensed. It almost sounds like the beep sound those machines make at the hospital that monitor vitals (if that makes sense :). If you set it without the sound, it's not the quietest due to the motor that it has, but not too obnoxious either. You can also set it to dispense a treat automatically at certain time intervals you set (like every 3 sec, etc.) which is useful when we're teaching him how to stay in his bed/"hot zone" in a down/sit position. There's also a random setting, so that it will change the treat dispensing frequency randomly. If the treat does jam, it will make a beeping noise and then flash an orange light. If the treat jams and I don't hear the noise in the room, then I'll notice the flashing orange light. It's also pretty easy to drop in the treats by opening the cover. Pretty cool too that you can take off the holder attachment where the treat would fall into (we have to have it off when we use it on the crate). Like I said, super versatile machine, well worth the cost in my honest opinion if you're using it for its intended purposes.

I wasn’t sure that this would be worth the cost, but now that I’ve had it for a couple months, I think it’s a steal. Not only does it come with the kibble/treat dispensing device, it comes with an incredibly thorough training program laid out as both a book and dvd that is the equivalent to at least one, more like two, positive training classes. As a new dog trainer, I really appreciate having all the steps laid out for me, so there’s no guesswork. The dvd includes examples of common training mistakes as well as examples of how to do it right, which is incredibly useful. I’m so grateful Dr Sophia Yin designed this. I have a one year old minigoldendoodle named Nessie who loves to go-go-go: she loves to run and jump. She’s very sensitive to changes in her environment and has always had a hard time settling. She was also a very picky eater who frequently left most of her kibble in her bowl at mealtimes. So I was worried about whether this would even work with her. I started at the beginning, following the directions for teaching your dog to eat. I was deeply skeptical, but in less than two weeks Nessie was reliably eating her full kibble portion as soon as I put it in her bowl. It worked! I then started working through the down stay program: we are currently at the 15 second interval (about halfway through), and the changes in Nessie have been marvellous. Not only does she love her mat & robot, she settles much more easily around the house at other times of day. I had tried teaching her settles before, but she rarely got to the point of true relaxation. Now she just chills on her mat, and it’s a wonder to behold. I’m just delighted with the progress she’s made and can’t wait to see her at the end of the program! Caveats: this is a weeks-long training program. It doesn’t take a huge amount of time every day (I spend 5-10 minutes at both of her mealtimes working on it), but it is a daily thing. I needed a lot of patience/faith at the beginning, as I adjusted Nessie’s eating habits and worked to teach her to understand she had to keep laying down on the mat. Her behavior changes have been more incremental (every week I seem to really notice more calmness) instead of an overnight switch. The robot & mat need to be picked up between training sessions, so they’ll need a storage space that’s easily accessible since you’ll be pulling them out at least twice a day. At first I had a lot of issues with kibble jamming the device (Taste of the Wild Appalachian Valley small breed, with the smaller dispenser). I was adding 2/3 of a cup in the morning-Nessie’s daily portion. Then I tried filling it up to the 1 cup mark (the lowest marker), and I almost never get jams anymore. Maybe 1 every 10 sessions. The beginning down-stays involve 20 reward dispensers/minute, so if you can’t get your dog to work for kibble, that’s going to be a challenge. That being said, Nessie was the kind of puppy who only worked for boiled chicken and rejected 90% of store bought treats, much less regular dry food, and now she’ll happily work for her kibble. So the directions in the book really did work for her. Also Nessie previously had worked through a different down-stay protocol & knew the cue ‘bed,’ although she certainly didn’t stay there until I released her. She’s been attending positive training classes since she was a baby, so she was already familiar with some of the concepts in the book (we could skip the sit to say please chapter).