Leave It

There's a traditional exercise that many trainers use to teach a dog to ignore or turn away from something in the environment that they don't want the dog to interact with.  Years ago, in the dark ages of dog training, this was taught with a leash correction.  The dog went to check out the object on the ground and POP goes the leash.  At the same time, the handler was usually yelling "LEAVE IT!".   The dog soon learned that "leave it" meant that a neck jerk was forthcoming and didn't even try to approach the object.

The kindler, gentler way to teach Leave It came around about the same time as clicker training was gaining in popularity.  The person held treats in a fist and let the dog mug the hand.  As soon as the dog backed off or looked away, click and treat - usually from another source than the hand holding the food.  Once the dog got the idea that to get what he wanted, he had to give up what he wanted (a little doggie zen), the verbal cue to "leave it" was added.  My experience has been that owners still end up yelling "LEAVE IT" and threatening the dog away from the object on the floor. 

Pip and I recently took a class in preparation for therapy dog certification.  The trainer was a lovely woman who still used some old school methods, especially for skills she felt critical for the dog's safety in a hospital.  Before I realized what was going to happen, I let her take Pip for a demonstration of "leave it".  As soon as Pip looked at the cookie on the floor, she got a leash pop and a solid command to "leave it".  To that point in time, Pip had never, ever had a leash pop.  Her ears went back, her tail tucked, she slunk low to the ground.  Since then, those two words cause similar reactions even when I said them. 

I wanted to find a different way to teach Pip to ignore something on the ground unless I gave her permission to get it.   This had become a problem during our last scent training lesson when she was scouring the floor for crumbs leftover from a previous class in the building.  She needs to learn to ignore those distractions while she's doing searches.

I just signed on to Susan Garrett's Recallers 3.0 class and one of the first core exercises is something called "It's Yer Choice".  This game teaches the dog self control and emphasizes that all good things come from the handler and not from the ground.  Perfect for us!  I read up on it, watched a couple of videos and adapted the technique for our use.  Don't take this as the golden way to do the Garrett technique.  This is what I feel comfortable with and I am pleased with the results so far. 

I videoed our first session because I wanted to go back and watch Pip's body language and be sure she didn't have any negative associations with the process.   Only once did I notice her ears go back and that's when my foot was moving to cover the biscuit. 

Pip knows "yes" as a marker as well as the click, so I used this instead.  Just not enough hands to hold the treats, feed the treat and click, too.  When you hear hissing in the video, it's me saying "yesss!".  At the start of the session, my fist is is full of steak and cheese.  When she exhibits self-control, she is rewarded.

Pip is a fast dog.   During the part of the session when we were working with the biscuit, she could have easily beat me to it and snatched it away before I could even move my foot enough to protect it.  I was very happy with the amount of impulse control she exhibited. 

I really like this way of teaching the "leave it" skill.  I like not having to yell at the dog.  I like that the dog is freely choosing what to do and gets rewarded for it.