[fracus]

How could you know if the German Shepherds are food motivated if they literally have food available to them whenever they want? I would guess if they were fed at discrete times of the day they would start looking at the owners for food.

[roguecoder]

That is a difference between "starving" and "being food motivated".

Think about humans: all humans need calories, but some people just want to drink Soylent and other people will spend hours creating elaborate meals. Some people will barely eat because they know they need to, while others will eat until they are sick if they don't stop themselves. Some people will walk miles for the best ice cream, while others will walk miles to see their favorite band.

[arcticbull]

Food drive is a thing in humans too, and it's something that's largely genetic -- and it's something that you can modify with anorectic drugs like GLP-1 RAs and stimulants. How much you eat is a combination of intrinsic food drive and trait conscientiousness.

Everyone knows someone who will eat like 3 potato chips and move onto something else, while others will sit and mow down the whole bag. Taking a GLP-1 will basically just convert you from one kind to the other in a dose-dependent way.

The same kind of variability is present in dogs - but without the conscientiousness axis.

[throwaway422432]

All the training in the world goes out the window when a GSD can graze.

But if there's something tasty going down like diced chicken breast or some steak, they'll show you they remember every learned command perfectly.

Even mentioning their favourite food gets their attention as some words are worth learning and remembering.

[dgfitz]

I had a husky-lab mix. He was not food-motivated at all. We did _not_ leave food for him all day long, because the other doggo, purebred lab, would eat the food designated for the husky if we did.

So we fed them both at the same time, twice a day, and had to watch if the husky would eat or not for that meal, and remove the food bowl if he wasn't hungry, so the lab wouldn't scarf it down.

This is an n=1 anecdote that your guess was the opposite of my experience. That dog just didn't care about food. He did however love eating ice cubes. I never tried just a bowl of ice cubes.