Max O'Neill teaches a seven-day protocol to charge the word "yes" as a powerful reward marker for dogs. Every bit of food the dog eats that week comes only after you say "yes," followed by a jackpot of multiple handfuls at the end of each session. The method works best with highly food-motivated dogs and sets up the marker for later counter-conditioning work.
Alright, here is how to charge your yes marker. So, again, prerequisite, your dog needs to be super motivated by food. Now what you're gonna do is you're gonna charge this over a 7-day period. For the next 7 days, every single gram of food that your dog consumes is only gonna come after they hear the word Y-E-S, okay? That's it, no free food out of a bowl, No nothing. Every ounce of food they get is gonna be coming after they hear the word yes. So if you go to work and give them a pig's ear or a Kong, tell them yes, and then give them the thing. And for all their meals, their brekkie, their dinner, everything is gonna come through this. You can go back to now just feeding them 2 or 3 times a day if you want. You don't have to do the full 3 or 4 through your food motivation guide anymore. You can go back to twice a day. Nelson, down. What you're gonna do, you're gonna take your dog's entire meal and you're gonna give them to that, give it to them, sorry, in their marker charge. Session. So, again, you're gonna take 7 days to do this. We're gonna put a chart down below, and each day you're gonna vary the amount of reps that they get, okay? The final repetition is they're gonna get their jackpot. What is a jackpot? So, when we reward a dog, we have 2 types of food rewards. We can give them the standard reward, which is just 1 serving. Yes! Like so, he got 1 handful from me. The other type of reward we can give them is a jackpot. So, our dogs can't fully count, but they can tell the difference between singular and multiple. So, down. That was a standard reward, he just got one handful. A jackpot would be going, "Yes!" And going, one, two, three, multiple handfuls of food like that. He's very well aware that he got paid a lot more for that than he did on the first one. Nelson, down. So, the way we're gonna charge our marker, we're gonna put a chart below this so you can get all your reps to make it nice and easy, but just remember, You're gonna do a standard reward, a standard reward, a jackpot reward, and your dog is gonna get that big jackpot on the last repetition of the exercise. So, you're gonna get your food. Today we're gonna do 3 reps total. Down. Okay, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna tell my dog, "Yes," and toss food one way. As soon as he finishes eating it, and just as he starts to lift his head up, I'm gonna tell him, "Yes," I'm gonna toss food, the other way. I just realized the camera is tracking him, not me. Sorry, I'm jumping out of frame. And then on that third rep, so he finishes eating that, I'm gonna say, "Yes," and then he's gonna get a big jackpot. Cool, let me just show you, it'll make more sense. Yes, one piece of food. Ready? Yes, second piece of food. Yes, handful of food, handful of food, handful of food. Okay? Just like the Newton's cradle, that's the name of the method, those balls that swing back and forth, that's essentially what we're doing. Down. Okay, so imagine that, that's day 1. On that last part, that would be your dog's entire meal. Okay, they go, damn, yes can get me that, that, or that. We wanna show them that the biggest, best rewards come from us. So let's imagine at day 2, now we're gonna split it into 5 reps. Okay, I'm gonna go, yes, toss 1, Yes. Toss 2. Yes. Number 3, one handful from me. Okay, now I'm gonna do a few more. Yes. Yes. Yes. Like that, and that's his meal done. Okay, so always rewarding on the last rep. So we go 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 with the big jackpot. That would be day 2. Day 3, we'd go up again, and so on and so forth. So, the next 7 days, your dog's marker is gonna be really, really, really potent, and it's gonna be a great tool to use for your counterconditioning and your training. Alrighty, thanks for watching. Good boy.
