The strongest reward your dog can have is getting to do what they want to do and that is the secret to building a Premack cue. We reward a behaviour our dogs don’t find rewarding or don’t like doing with one they do like doing and the value of the preferred behaviour transfers over! Premack games teach our dogs that by doing something for us (i.e., a cue’d behaviour), they get an opportunity to interact with the distractions, but otherwise not. Your dog learns that the value for working with you is GREATER THAN the distraction! This game introduces the first level of the premack games.
Before you play this game think about what cue word you are going to use, and keep in mind you may have multiple cues to deal with different environments. For example, consider you are an off-leash hike with your dog. A highly desirable behaviour for all dogs is interacting with distractions. On your hike in the bush there are smells, critters, other hikers, etc., that your dog would really like to interact with. Having different premack cues can clearly indicate to your dog what they are being allowed to do AFTER they do something for you. So you cue a “sit”, which in this environment is a very low value behaviour to your dog. Your dog sits and you then give your premack cue. Maybe it is “ok go” which means your dog can go run. Maybe there is another hiker approaching so you give the cue “go say hi”…the possibilities are endless so consider what things are most desirable TO YOUR DOG and develop appropriate cue(s) that will work for you.