Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Add some interesting smells and dogs will eat absolutely anything.

    Used tampons, literal shit, soiled underwear, dierhia, dead bird, freshly killed cat, they owners... It is basically a pig with collar that lives in your house.

    by doglover737484
  • I think you are a bit biased
    by efilife
  • And so useful when you don't feel like scraping the dishes. ;-)
    by dgacmu
  • Like these siblings ?

    https://youtu.be/nMNLrQW7_pU

    by srean
  • It'd be hard to sleep with a pig in the bed with us though, but point taken. Now I kind of wanna get a pig-buddy for our dog.
    by embedding-shape
  • * varies by breed

    I've seen many a lab eat their own shit, but my standard poodle takes his time investigating even a piece of steak before he decides whether it's worth eating.

    by ngai_aku
  • Interesting read! I might replicate with my two whippets. What’s their inter-rater reliability?

    You also should continue with a swap of the hands; randomize which one is in the left and record the results to see if the left bias is real

    by pike00
  • Bebop is clearly being paid off by Big Chicken to skew the results
    by lijok
  • Big Chicken == Tyson, I believe, at least in the US.

    Big Strawberry == Driscoll's, at least on the west coast. And those are some pretty undistinguished strawberries.

    by shermantanktop
  • The best dog treat is always the treat the OTHER dog is eating.
    by buildsjets
  • Oh my goodness.
    by savethejoy
  • Or cat turds
    by weberer
  • My one dog hates broccoli but she will choke it down just so the other one can’t have it.
    by ses1984
  • My dog told me to write that the set of treats is missing non bleached rawhide, other dehydrated meats (eg rabbit, goat, fish), animal parts (eg ears), and vegetables. Also, he volunteers.
    by thih9
  • My Husky used to CRAVE little dehydrated minnows. Extra crunchy.
    by buildsjets
  • In my experience, it's usually a partly-rotten deer leg found in the bushes on a nature walk.
    by zerobees
  • With Bebop, it's dead birds! He also finds them, then checks the same spot for months afterwords!
    by wespiser_2018
  • This makes me wonder what the research is for whether certain types or breeds of dog prefer certain dog treats, and how individual dogs might develop a preference for one kind over another. Based on this experiment it doesn't seem like the type of meat matters much, since while the top ranked treat is chicken, his second favourite seems to be the duck one.
    by CM30
  • I'd guess texture and(or) smell might matter as much as the actual meat
    by RataNova
  • We have 4 smaller dogs (mix of chihuahua and terriers), and they all absolutely love the greenies over anything else. One of them now has a prescribed treat and he definitely isn't happy about it, and the others won't touch it.

    Hardest part is now feeding them all separate dishes at regular times every day.

    by tracker1
  • It's pretty interesting, but Bebop is barely treat motivated, and mostly inside. Once you take him outside, especially in open areas, he becomes more interested in tracking movement and chasing things.

    I believe it's explained by the job we've asked Greyhounds to do: see movement, get released, run after it. Once you let go, that's it, the dog needs to be motivated enough by the running animal or lure, and there's no chance to reinforce the loop once it starts!

    by wespiser_2018
  • Author here: I did a quick experiment with my Greyhound, Bebop, to figure out the treat he prefers best using pair-wise comparison analyzed with the Bradley-Terry model. Same tech as Elo scores in chess, and several other places! Enjoy!
    by wespiser_2018
  • Really weird question but what boots are you wearing in your blog photo? They look wide enough for my weird feet. Thanks
    by zthrowaway
  • I love it. For years with my old dog I would give him a binary choice between two treats and intuitively got a sense of his favorites as well. More satisfying to me was giving him the choice, which (maybe I'm over personifying him) I think he liked to pick his favorite. He had stomach issues which limited him to really only a few types of treats, and it was obvious which were his favorites, but it was fun anyway. I miss that dog.
    by andrew_eu
  • This just feels like an excuse to give your dog a statically significant amount of treats
    by abofh
  • Bebop: "I don't fully understand the model but I support increasing the sample size"
    by RataNova
  • My dog's favorite treat is the most expensive one. Or the one that causes the most intestinal (and therefore cleanup) issues. All it takes is a pause and some brief math to see that a lot of (good for your dog) dog treats are $16/lb. That's not even remotely the most expensive. It's cheaper to feed them straight meat. I've resorted to making my own treats. It's like $4/lb, plus you know exactly what goes into it (mostly ground turkey, yams, rice/chickpea flour).
    by jnellis
  • care to share the recipe?
    by scrtm
  • One thing I'm not following is how the side/order bias is being handled. OP measures a IMO very large bias towards left-hand treats, but it is unclear how that is handled (ahem)? Skimming https://github.com/adamwespiser/best-dog-treat/blame/main/an... doesn't help me understand if it is being modeled as a covariate to adjust for the bias or if it was dealt with by construction (eg. by always offering pairs twice, swapping hands), or what?

    Incidentally OP if you want to make it more adaptive, you can just fit the B-T model each time, and grab a posterior sample of what the best pair is, and test that, which turns out to be Thompson sampling. I did this for fun with blind taste-testing of mineral waters: https://gwern.net/water

    by gwern
  • That's awesome! Thank you!
    by wespiser_2018