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Summary: Learn how to train your dog to 'leave it' when walking in the woods in this free video.
Views: 728 | Tags: water, leash, hiking, food, dog, walking, fleas, dogs, animals, woods, woodlands, id
About the Expert
Elise McMahon Elise McMahon has a Ph.D. in animal behavior, and has been working with both domestic and wild dogs since the early 1990s. She began studying domestic dogs in... read more
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Questions & AnswersSo the woods are home to lots of different critters and these animals live here all the time we might be walking through on occasionally but this is the home to these different animals. And not all these animals are animals going to be friendly to you and your dog, couple of examples will be a skunk and a porcupine, small little critters that you can run across and you probably won't have a good experience if you ran across it with your dog. One of the things you want to make sure that your dog is familiar with and reacts well to the command is a command called leave it. And I'll show you how you can start working on that with your dog, Ursa this way, hello this way, good girl. So if I got a cookie in my hand right here and I tell here to leave it, okay, you'll notice that she doesn't go for it until I released her. Ursa leave it. Okay. If this we're a porcupine sniffing it will give it quil. Ursa leave it. Okay, good. So once I get the dog reliable so that she's working like that out of my hand then I can try it on the ground. So I'm starting to generalize the concept here, leave it, okay, then I tell her she can go and find it. So in the beginning of working on this I making a deal with the dog, I'm telling her if you leave it you can have it. Now I'm going to change it, and I'm going to tell her to leave something and I'm going to give her something else as an reward. So I mentioned skunks let's just say one of the things I come across on the trail is a skunk. Ursa leave it. So we got our little skunk here on the trail I tell her to leave it, good girl, and I'm giving her something else now. I'm giving her a praised for not taking it. Obviously with a skunk I'm not going to leave it and tell her okay go take it, so I'm switching the game here and I'm telling her to leave it and I'm saying good girl and I'm praising her to having left it. Now I want to walk by this skunk that's in the trail, Ursa leave it, let's go this way, uh ah leave it, good girl, good job, and she comes right by. Urs this way, let's go, Ursa leave it, uh ah leave it let's go, good girl, good girl. So it's important to practice this kind of thing with your dog before you run across the skunk or porcupine or something like that. And certainly you can practice with a toy that looks like a skunk but you can use anything, it doesn't really matter what it is your telling the dog leave as long as they have the concept.
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