# How to prevent dog from eating/picking up everything outside?!



## goldhaven (Sep 3, 2009)

Sounds like he would make a great search and rescue dog. If he likes to have his nose to the ground anyway, you may want to place things around for him to find and then make a game out of it. He can only pick up the item that you want him to find. Then, hopefully, with training, he will only have his nose to the ground when asked to find something. I have a dog like that and she loves the "find it" command.


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## solinvictus (Oct 23, 2008)

Susan Garrett's It's Yer Choice.

There is no command it becomes an automatic "leave it" the dog does not take an item without permission.

Follow the video and practice it, then practice it outside in different areas. Dogs don't always generalize that is why you want to train it outside in different setting after they are good at it inside. 

You can then practice with toys, sticks, leaves anything you think your dog will go after. But first have a good solid It's Yer Choice with the lower value items before bumping it up and using those highly valued outside items.

This game is so valuable. We have dogs in south western pennsylvania that have recently been poisoned. If a dog has the automatic "leave it" it will over time make the good choices and may not be as vulnerable to people that would do such things.


For those with new puppies don't let your dog get anything off the floor. If you drop it you get it. If it is okay for the pup to have you give it by hand. Bad habits are hard to break start them out right from the beginning and you won't have to break the bad habit.

A solid It's Yer Choice has the dog making good choices for what you are describing it works much better than the leave it game because a solid I don't take anything without it being offered is much easier than having to micro manage every second running around saying leave it, leave it, leave it.


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## baumgartml16 (Jun 19, 2011)

I need to bookmark this, that is great!


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## LifeOfRiley (Nov 2, 2007)

Thank you so much for posting that video! We need to start working on that, like right now.

Riley's "leave it" is pretty darned solid, but it's useless unless I happen to see the forbidden object before he picks it up and have time to give the command. As we found out last week, that doesn't always happen. When there's a bone laying in half-dead, brown grass, I just can't see it in time. And when it's something that high-value, he's not about to "drop it", either.

I'm so glad I saw this thread!


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## Vhuynh2 (Feb 13, 2012)

I wish I could've seen that video sooner! Yesterday Molly got her first dead bird.. thank goodness it had been dead for awhile and it was just bones and feathers.. I had never seen her grip onto anything so hard.


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## Walnut_the_Nut (Jan 25, 2012)

solinvictus said:


> "It's Yer Choice" - YouTube Susan Garrett's It's Yer Choice.
> 
> There is no command it becomes an automatic "leave it" the dog does not take an item without permission.
> 
> ...


This is fantastic! I'm going to start trying this tonight. Hopefully it's not too late for our puppy. 

Do you think it's okay if we use the clicker with this? Any reason not to?

Thanks so much!


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## inge (Sep 20, 2009)

Very interesting! Thank you very much!


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## solinvictus (Oct 23, 2008)

What they are doing is called Classical Conditioning. This is what helps to make it an automatic choice. Classical conditioning is more primal. It will work better for what you want your pup to do.Classical conditioning forms an association between two stimuli.
If you use the clicker you will then be using operant conditioning and that builds an association between a behavior and a consequence. This is how you would teach the leave it command. It becomes a named behavior instead of just automatic.


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## inge (Sep 20, 2009)

I just tried it with Liza and Tess. Tess takes two seconds and then she knows what I want...Liza took a little longer... :bowl: But she seems to enjoy games, so we will continue!


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## goldhaven (Sep 3, 2009)

solinvictus said:


> "It's Yer Choice" - YouTube Susan Garrett's It's Yer Choice.
> 
> There is no command it becomes an automatic "leave it" the dog does not take an item without permission.
> 
> ...



That is a great video. Thanks for sharing.


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## mayapaya (Sep 28, 2011)

solinvictus said:


> "It's Yer Choice" - YouTube Susan Garrett's It's Yer Choice.
> 
> There is no command it becomes an automatic "leave it" the dog does not take an item without permission.
> 
> ...


Thanks for this video! I worked on this with my two last night--perfected step one and onto step two!


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## Tucker's mommy (Nov 9, 2011)

Wow. Thanks so much for sharing this. I'm going to try to work on it for our Tucker - he's already a year old. Is that too late? We've been using the leave it/drop it commands with success, but like it's been said already, it gets really tiring having to say it ALL THE TIME. I hope he's able to pick up on this new train of thought! So cool!


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## solinvictus (Oct 23, 2008)

It takes time to build new habits. The more practice the better he will get at it. Tucker is a smart doggie. 
While training it should just be a fun game to play with your dog. Dog learns if mom holds food in front of my face and I don't take it I win I get the food. Taking a lot of time and repetition before moving on to each step and building that good habit. We always want to set the dog up to succeed so into it is really solid with lots of different type items I wouldn't have the dog do it in real life situations. I would still use my named "leave it" game. Dogs learn in the training setting really fast but when we get in those real life situations it is much harder for them. That is why we need to build on these games/habits/behaviors slowly having lots of fun and reinforcement on the way.


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