# Teaching "If I Don't Give It To You, You Can't Eat It"



## SwimDog (Sep 28, 2014)

Theoretically this is possible. It's a lot of work.

In my experience it's a lot easier to just teach the dog to wear a muzzle (jafco brand is nice for dogs who ingest things). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FABgZTFvHo


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## retrieverbear (Jan 19, 2014)

bumping this up - I'm interested in this as well. Our guy won't eat food unless we give it to him (including food that has fallen out of his bowl) but he has put dangerous non food objects into his mouth so this training would be great.


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## bixx (Sep 8, 2015)

I've started this particular training with my 5 month old golden Amber. She got it after two tries and has been quite reliable with this command when outside. Quite, because it's a new thing for her and she is still discovering new things each time we walk out...like a small piece of fallen french fry which she put in her mouth at the same time i said leave it. She spat it out immediately so i am somewhat confident that the leave it command is strongly engraved in her follow list.

She is reliable with sit and down (lying down) commands both verbal and hand signal. So I think it's best that your dog also is reliable with these commands.
I begin with sit command exercise, rewarding her each time.
Then I do the down command and kneel in front of her. I reward her a few times for staying in the down position.
Then I put a kibble in front of her paws and her first instinct was to eat it. I blocked her mouth by putting my hand palm down above the kibble with the command leave it. Note that I am only blocking her nose, not putting a protective cover on the kibble. To take her mind off the kibble on the ground (and my hand block on it), I immediately start rewarding her with kibbles from my hand with the command "take it". So she is actually learning two commands in one go -- leave it and take it. We repeated this twice. By the third time, she was ignoring the kibbles I put in front of her and waiting only for the ones coming from my hand. I've also put kibbles on her paws, blocking her nose if it goes in the direction of the kibbles. And while she's ignoring the kibbles on the ground and looking at me, I am constantly rewarding her with the command ''take it'' each time she gets a kibble from my hand. Now we have graduated to walking around the living room and me dropping really tasty things on the ground for her. The first time I dropped a kibble, I looked to see what she would do. Without a command, her tongue was almost halfway out. I immediately said leave it (and prepared to bend down and block her nose) and she did leave it without me needing to block. I praised her for this (good girl!), along with the take it command with a kibble as a reward at the end of our little walk around the coffee and dining table. Practice the command during walks out. It's a little challenging when they are still young because they HAVE to smell and chew everything, but once they learn this, they do "leave it", whatever it is, albeit..with a little difficulty. If they put dangerous non food stuff in their mouth, I suggest practicing with objects instead of kibble (but don't forget to reward with kibble!). Don't ever use their regular toys for this exercise. A plastic bottle for example is very tempting to them, so you will need an extra tasty treat to get them focused on you and the leave it command. 

hope this helps!


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## amandac (May 4, 2015)

Google Susan Garrett's "It's Yer Choice". She basically teaches leave-it without having to say the words. I think it is a better way because, in the dog's mind, if you don't tell them not to eat something (the leave-it command) then it is fair game. There are lots of you tube videos on line and it was pretty easy to train my girl Zoey.


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## Driggsy (Jun 12, 2014)

thank you for the replies!


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