First of all, it teaches the dog whatdo, instead of just whatto do. With reward-based training your dog knows, for example, to sit and wait while you come in from the car with bags of shopping instead of jumping all over you. Over time, if the behaviour of ‘sit’ keeps getting reinforced, your dog will sit in other situations when they are not sure what to do. That happens to align with what you would like too, but can you see how it’s useful from the dog’s perspective? It helps to give a sense of control e.g. “If I sit, I will get patted.”Secondly, it’s something fun for the dog to do with you. Dogs love hanging out with their owners and doing nice things. The great thing about reward-based training is that your dog is guaranteed to earn some rewards, because you’re going to set the difficulty level to make sure that happens.And did you know that dogs like to work to earn rewards? Ragen McGowan, the scientist who worked on what she called the ‘eureka effect’ in dogs (McGowan et al 2013) told me that it’s just like the great feeling we get when we solve a problem. Dogs in her study wagged their tails more and were more excited to get another go when they had to work to earn the reward, compared to when they just got the reward anyway.