How to Teach Your Dog to Leave It

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is Nancy Cusick and I'm a professional dog trainer in Austin, Texas. You can visit my web site at www.trainmydogs.com. Today we're going to show you how to teach your dog a behavior called "leave it". Leave it is one of my favorite behaviors. You're going to use it to replace the word "no". This is a good example of leave it right here. O.k., so anything that you don't want your dog to have, touch, sniff, go near, pick up would be "leave it". We're going to start teaching leave it with food. I'm going to introduce you with clicker training as well. So when you hear me make this sound, I'm going to give the dog a reward. So every time she hears the click she's going to get rewarded. I'm having a treat in my hand right now to Brody. I'm going to hold the food in my hand and keep my fist closed. She's going to lick it and sniff it, and lick it and sniff it. And any time she pulls away from my hand she's going to get rewarded. If you don't have a clicker, yes. You can use your word "yes". Means the same thing. Yes, good girl. O.k. now I'm going to lay down a hand full of food. If you have a dog who truly does not know leave it at all, I highly suggest you put them on a leash and you hook them to something, and keep them right out of range of the food. Whenever they quit trying to go towards it and they settle back is when you would mark the behavior, and tell them yes. With every behavior that we learn it's important that we have three D's. You got duration, we have adding distance and we have distractions. Like throwing around the food. So when we first start teaching this I'm going to reward Brody pretty quickly for having the food out in front of her. Most puppies who don't know leave it at this point would be racing trying to get the food. Good job. I'm going to make it harder by moving around the food, kind of like you're playing with jacks. Good girl. When in doubt, work on leave it. Leave it's important. And you know five minutes, ten minutes of leaving food isn't that long when you're having a picnic. Or there's chicken bones on the ground at a festival. Good girl. We can also make this harder for Brody by moving the food in closer to her body. Leave it treats should always come from your hand, not the floor. And what I mean by that is I'm not going to put it in front of her and allow her to eat it. I want it to be black and white when learning leave it. Yes. O.k. now that I see that Brody is doing the behavior, I'm going to begin to load the word. Leave it. Leave it. Leave it. Yes. Leave it. Leave it. Leave it. Yes. If this was harder for Brody for me to bring it in closer around her paw, she's going to start receiving jackpot rewards for allowing me to bring it in closer. So that just means I'm going to reward her faster for allowing me to have it so close around her paws and near her; ope that was almost a steal but she didn't get it. Play good defense. Don't let your dog steal the treats. So now we're going to work on a little duration. Having the food on the ground. Good girl Brody. Good job. Good job. Another thing I can add to this behavior is eye contact. And the way that; yes. The way that I get eye contact from Brody is I just sit here and I wait. And whenever she decides to look up at me she's going to get marked for making eye contact with me. What'll happen is in stead of staring at the food she's going to learn to stare at me when the food is put on the ground. Leave it. Leave it. Yes. Leave it. Yes. And we're already seeing her start to look up and make eye contact. This is how you start to train your dog to leave it. Remember to generalize on lots of things. Dogs don't generalize very well. So just because I taught it on food doesn't mean it's going to work on that squirrel. Make sure that you go out into the environment and you train under high distraction and you..."