What makes food chasing so good?

The Taste
This one is obvious. Dogs love to eat, especially delicious treats.

The Hunt
Dogs are predators. Even though they are quite far removed from wolves by now, even the tiniest lap dog still has quite a bit of predator inside him. Motion triggers this predatory instinct. Dogs get a huge kick out of chasing. If you know any dog that has a habit of chasing wildlife, you probably know that whether or not the dog ever catches what he is pursuing is not even that important to him.

I have trained with dogs with a really bad habit of chasing squirrels, and these dogs had never caught even a single squirrel in their life. The ultimate outcome of the hunt doesn’t matter to them. All the want is the rush of the pursuit.

In food chasing, the dog therefore can combine his (pretty much) two favorite things in life: eating and chasing.
We do not ask him for anything at all, it is a pure game.

For food chasing, make sure that you use treats that are visible on the ground that you are playing on.

We do not want your dog to sniff around and disengage.

Keep in mind that dogs’ color vision is much poorer than ours. If your dog is struggling to see the treats, you probably have to switch to a different color treat.

One treat that works very well for this in most environments are cheese balls or little cubes of cheddar cheese.

The bright orange is a great contrast on pretty much all surfaces.