35,000 Years of Connection: Why Meat Matters in Dog Training
When I talk to people about the food I use during dog training, I like to take them back about 35,000 years. Long before packaged kibble, pet stores, training treats, and all the other products we associate with dogs today, humans were hunting, gathering, and living off the land. We were feeding our families with the animals we hunted, preserving what was valuable, and using what we could to survive.
That period in our history also helps us understand the beginning of the relationship between humans and the ancestors of the dogs living in our homes today. Around those early human settlements, food created an opportunity for two species to begin interacting in a completely different way. When I think about the role food still plays in our relationship with dogs, I think that history is worth understanding.
Picture What That Relationship Looked Like
Imagine an early group of humans returning from a successful hunt. They process the animal and use what they need. There is muscle meat, connective tissue, organs, bone, hide, and fat. Unlike the livestock we raise today, wild game wasn't being raised on modern feedlot rations designed to increase weight and marbling. These were active animals living off the land, and the meat available to early humans would have looked very different from much of what we see in a grocery store today.
Fat was especially valuable because it provided a concentrated source of energy and could help people survive when food became scarce. Depending on the animal, the season, and the success of the hunt, there could also be more lean muscle meat and scraps available than a group of people could immediately use. Whatever wasn't eaten, preserved, carried, or otherwise used could end up discarded around the area where people were living.
Wolves living nearby had every reason to notice. Instead of having to hunt for every meal, there was food available around these human groups. The animals willing to stay close enough to take advantage of those scraps had access to another food source, while the wolves that were too aggressive or unwilling to tolerate people were far less likely to benefit from that relationship.
Over generations, that proximity helped shape a relationship between humans and the ancestors of today's dogs. It wasn't someone deciding one morning to domesticate a wolf and bring it inside the cave. It was a relationship that developed over a very long period of time, and food was part of what brought our two species together.
The First Connection Was Built Around Food
That's the part of the story I find so interesting as a dog trainer. Humans and dogs have changed tremendously since those early interactions, but food is still one of the most useful tools we have for creating communication and building behavior.
When I'm working with a dog, I want to use something that actually matters to that dog. There are plenty of commercial training treats available, and some dogs will happily work for almost anything, but I personally like using something much simpler. One of my favorites is lean muscle meat, usually top round or London broil.
There's nothing complicated about it. I know what I'm holding, I know what the primary ingredient is, and dogs tend to find it extremely valuable. That makes it useful when I'm teaching something new, working around distractions, or trying to get enough quality repetitions to help a dog understand what I'm asking.
What I Buy for Training
You don't need an expensive cut of steak to do this. Top round roast and London broil work great, and they're usually relatively inexpensive compared with premium cuts. Depending on the store and current prices, I can often find them somewhere around $6.50 to $7.50 per pound, and sometimes considerably cheaper when they're marked down.
One of my favorite things to do is check the meat section at Jewel-Osco for packages approaching their sell-by date. I've found cuts marked down 50 percent simply because the store needs to move them. If I'm going home to prepare the meat anyway, that can turn into a lot of training treats for not much money.
The other advantage is simplicity. Instead of buying a small bag of treats and trying to figure out what every ingredient is doing in there, I'm buying a piece of beef, cutting it into tiny pieces, and preparing it specifically for training. One roast can produce a surprising number of rewards when every piece only needs to be large enough for the dog to taste it and want another repetition.
How I Prepare Meat for Dog Training
I start by cutting the meat into small, training-sized pieces. Remember that we're not serving the dog dinner every time they do something correctly. These are rewards that may be given repeatedly throughout a session, so the pieces can be small. The goal is to let the dog get the reward, swallow it quickly, and be ready to continue working.
Once everything is cut, I get a pan very hot. I don't add oil because I don't need it. The meat goes directly into the dry pan for a quick sear, usually around 25 to 45 seconds depending on the size of the pieces and how hot the pan is. Because the pieces are so small, they cook quickly, so I'm watching the meat rather than walking away and relying entirely on a timer.
After that, I dump everything into a colander and let the excess moisture drain. Then I pull out a long section of paper towel, double it up, spread the meat across it, and roll the whole thing tightly like a burrito. I gently press and squeeze the roll so the paper towels absorb the moisture on the outside of the meat.
I'll usually repeat that process with fresh paper towels a couple more times. By the third round, there should be much less moisture coming off. What I'm left with is a pile of small pieces of meat that I can portion out and use during training without having a wet, greasy mess in my hands or training pouch.
Why Go Through the Trouble?
The answer is value. If I'm asking a dog to work around something difficult or distracting, I want to have a reward that can compete with what's happening around us. The dog ultimately determines what's valuable, and for a lot of dogs, meat carries considerably more value than a dry biscuit.
Think about how much the environment can change what you're asking of your dog. Sitting in the kitchen when nothing is happening is one thing. Maintaining attention when there are people moving around, another dog nearby, interesting smells on the ground, or squirrels running through the yard is something else entirely. The behavior may have the same name, but the level of difficulty has changed.
This is why I like having high-value food available. I can reward attention, position, recall, calm behavior, engagement, or any other behavior I'm actively teaching. The dog does something I want to reinforce, I mark that moment, and the dog gets something it genuinely values. Then we can reset and get another repetition.
Those repetitions matter because one successful attempt doesn't create a trained behavior. Dogs need opportunities to practice, understand patterns, and learn what produces the outcome we're looking for. Good food helps me create those opportunities without turning the training session into a constant battle for the dog's attention.
Food Is a Training Tool, Not the Training Program
Using high-value food doesn't mean I want a dog that only listens when I have steak in my hand. That's not the goal at all. Food is one tool we can use to teach, reinforce, and communicate while the dog is learning.
Early in training, I may use food frequently because I'm trying to create a lot of successful repetitions. As the dog becomes more knowledgeable and reliable, the way I use reinforcement can change. What matters is that the dog understands what I'm asking and that the owner understands how to follow through consistently.
This is also why I don't like reducing dog training to treats. You still need communication, expectations, boundaries, repetition, timing, and follow-through. A handful of meat doesn't replace any of those things. It simply gives me a powerful way to tell the dog, "Yes, that's what I wanted," while we're building the behavior.
How This Connects to the Way I Think About a Dog's Diet
The meat I use for training also connects to the larger way I think about canine nutrition. When people get into raw feeding, one framework you'll commonly hear discussed is approximately 80 percent muscle meat, 10 percent edible bone, 5 percent liver, and 5 percent another secreting organ such as kidney or spleen. The muscle meat I'm using for training fits naturally into that broader conversation about feeding recognizable animal-based foods.
I'm not saying you need to completely change your dog's diet because you read one article about training treats. What I do want people to think about is what they're putting into their dog's body and why they're feeding it. If I can use small pieces of lean beef as a valuable training reward instead of constantly reaching for highly processed treats, that's an easy decision for me.
It also gives owners another way to think about food beyond simply filling the bowl. Food can have a purpose. It can be part of training, part of enrichment, part of building engagement, and part of how we communicate with a dog throughout the day.
From a Campfire to a Training Pouch
This is where the whole story comes back together for me. Thousands of years ago, humans were processing animals and living alongside wild canids that discovered there was value in staying near us. Food helped create proximity, and that proximity became part of a relationship that developed across generations.
Today, I'm obviously not sitting outside a cave throwing scraps to a wolf. I'm standing in someone's kitchen, walking through a neighborhood, working in a park, or helping an owner teach their dog how to behave around distractions. But I can still put a few small pieces of meat in my training pouch and use food as part of the communication between a human and a dog.
That's why I like going back to this story when I explain what I use for training. It gives people context for something that can otherwise seem almost too simple. You don't necessarily need a brightly colored bag with a picture of a dog on the front to have a great training reward. Sometimes you can walk into the grocery store, grab a lean cut of beef, spend a little time preparing it, and end up with hundreds of useful repetitions sitting in your refrigerator.
More importantly, those pieces of meat aren't doing the training for you. They're giving you opportunities to communicate clearly, reward the behaviors you want, and build repetition with your dog. The food is valuable, but what you do with it is what matters.
For me, that's the connection between this history and the dogs we're training today. Our relationship with dogs has been developing for thousands of years, and food has been part of that relationship for a very long time. Understanding that gives us another way to think about what we're feeding, how we're training, and why something as simple as a small piece of meat can still be such a powerful tool.