The benefits of Box Feeding
- Lou Jones
- Apr 11
- 1 min read
You may not have heard of box / bucket feeding, but it can be an incredibly powerful tool in dog training.
The purpose of box feeding is to help support a dog to become more resilient, confident and focused. It can be used to help with sound sensitivities, environmental sensitivies and cooperative care handling.
The theory is that they learn to keep their head in the box or targeting on something in the box whilst noises or events happen around them. Focusing on the task of head in box builds their resilience to what's going on around them, and can help give confidence in what is expected of them, and that noises or events do not equal scary things happening. They can focus on their cue and be rewarded, rather than getting stressed.
We've created a short video on getting started with box feeding so you can try it with your dog too!
You'll need:
An opaque box or bucket that is deep enough that it shields your dogs head, but isn't too tall that it's uncomfortable for them to keep their head in
A clicker (or verbal marker word)
Lots of small treats or kibble!
Bucky and Lauren show you how to get the initial behaviour, and start to encourage the dog to make the decision themselves to dip their head in.
If you've got a sound-sensitive or nervous dog, and you'd like to see if box feeding could help them, pop us an email at admin@spiriteddogtraining.co.uk and we can get you booked in for a session.
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