I just read Ed's article on this subject. I was wondering if anyone here followed his guidelines and how it worked out. Also, do any of you have any other successful methods?

I saw an article by Ed Kohler (name-?) in which he recommended a fence charger be used to shock the hell out of the dog when eating a piece of meat from the yard. What's wrong with this method?

Ed also spoke of dipping meat into anti-freeze and then teaching the dog to avoid that scent. Have any of you tried any other methods to keep your dog from drinking that substance and how did it work out?

Be careful of tricks and gimmicks.

This is a link to Ed's article on Food Refusal for anyone who is interested.

Patrick Bill Koehler was talking about poison proofing a dog by training him to refuse food everywhere. The link on Ed’s site is referring to refusing food in competitions that require that exercise. These are not necessarily the same thing. More than likely they are not even close.

There are many drawbacks to training this for real.

I wrote an article about poison proofing awhile ago. Here it is again.

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FOOD REFUSAL TRAINING
© 1998 BY LOU CASTLE


(Throughout this article "training collar refers to the Ecollar.")

This is a common use of the training collar, aversion training with a twist. The twist is that you not only want the dog not to eat stray piece of food, but that you also must train that it’s O.K. to eat under certain circumstances.

While it’s appropriate to train a bird dog to NEVER chase deer, it’s not too good to train a dog to NEVER eat. They tend to get real thin and then die.

You have to decide beforehand what you want from your dog. Do you want the dog to only accept food from you? (Better not ever go out of town or on vacation). Do you want the dog to only eat from a special dish? (Better not ever lose or break that dish. Better not take the dog out of town and forget that dish).

I’m going to assume that you understand the concepts behind the use of the collar and that you have desensitized the dog to wearing it.

Do this training before his mealtime, when you are sure he is hungry. Pick a day when you have no commitments for the whole day.

Put the collar on the dog with the highest possible level of stimulation.

Put some tasty treats of a type that you don’t normally feed in the yard in a place where you can clearly see them. These should be smelly treats, that even you can smell. You MUST be able to see them so that you can give a correction to the dog for approaching them.

When the dog approaches the treat and is about 6" from one of them, give the dog a one full second stimulation.

Do not give less than one second, and do not give more.

The dog will probably avoid THAT treat in that particular location. You should be in the house watching through a window. It works best if the dog does not notice you watching. The confrontation should be between the treat and the dog. If the dog notices you, it may come to believe that you had something to do with the stimulation and will only not eat found food when you are present.

Sooner or later, and this may take some patience on your part, the dog will notice another piece of treat and will head towards is. When the dog is 6" from that treat give a three – four second stimulation.

That treat in that location is probably now history. Your dog will probably ignore it for years.

Now is when it gets difficult. It may take an hour before the dog finds and goes for the third treat in the yard. If the dog finds that treat and goes for it, give the dog a five second stimulation. He needs to have a third correction, no matter how long it takes.

Bring him in and feed him from his bowl.

Repeat this tomorrow, with the same treats in different places. Pick up the old treats. Ideally he should smell the treat and veer away from them. If he does, bring him in and feed him.

If he goes to eat one of the treats, give him a five second stimulation.

By now, for sure he should be smelling the treats but veering away from them.

Repeat this the next day.

If he still avoids the treats, feed him from this bowl in the house.

Repeat this with another type of smelly, flavorful treat. Repeat this with all the treats you can think he may like.

Repeat this in all environments he is likely to find himself; the park, the front yard, etc., virtually anyplace you may go.

See why this is so hard? Dogs rarely generalize training to different locations.

There’s much more, but I’m sure you get the idea.

Mostly people are only concerned with their yard so that makes it a bit easier. You have to try ALL treats. If you forget one, your dog may think that this one is O.K.

This should get you started.

Thank you Lou. Specifically, which e-collar do you recommend for this?

And what about proofing against the dog drinking anti-freeze?

I can't help you with how to train against anti-freeze but I will say this...it only takes a teaspoon or less to kill an average size dog...what happens if the dog does not respond to the correction and eats the meat before you can stop them? Even small pieces of meat "dipped" in this could be enough to cause kidney damage at the very least. I would be VERY uncomfortable with any type of training where there was any possibility of the dog ingesting the anti-freeze...no matter how small the amount....I have seen too many dogs and cats die from this and the complications that it causes.
Remember, it has a very sweet taste and will extremely interesting and tempting to take.

Patrick the Ecollar I’ve been recommending for everything is the Dogtra 1200NCP. It will work for this just fine AND will allow you to use it for training anything you want to do.

If you’re going to do food refusal training then I’d go ahead and proof against the antifreeze as well. I think that I’d do it by itself rather than dipping meat into it. Since antifreeze is so dangerous (one lick can be fatal) I’d suggest that you place a drop of it inside a piece of PVC tubing (to start) so the dog can’t get to it. You could also place the drop into a deep jar or punch some holes in the lid. Don't forget to proof on the PVC and the jar and lid.

When doing this kind of training you have to be careful not to contaminate the article with your scent. Otherwise the dog may associate your scent with the poison proofing. This should be done the same as is done with narcotics or ordinance training; using plastic gloves and sterile tongs.

I like to train the various odors individually before mixing them together. When you proof I’d suggest that you train both individually and mixed together. Some dogs will look for the “whole scent picture” that means that if you train for antifreeze on meat if only one scent is present they may think that since only one part of the picture is present, it’s OK to eat it.

I know that some people who are training for narcotics are starting out with all the scents mixed together. But before they certify they test on the individual scents.

I think that you can simplify the process by mixing everything that you want to proof the dog off of at once. But before the training is complete, I’d advise that you test each scent by itself.

My article was just the tip of the iceberg on this topic. It was written with the intent to dissuade people from doing this sort of training, rather than to tell them how to do it. This work is very similar to training a dog to find narcotics. The manual used by US Customs for this is about 2” thick!

And finally, even if you do it perfectly, if the dog gets hungry enough, he’ll eat stuff he finds.

Jerri - I couldn't agree more with you about not taking chances when training with anti-freeze.

Lou - I just want to say thank you for taking the time to help me with this. It is much appreciated.

This is one aspect of training that I'm not looking forward to. But I feel like my dogs are vulnerable without it. It's pretty unlikely that they would ever need it but the world is full of sick cowards.

Good luck with that, but I'll point out that dogs have been fatally poisoned by anti-freeze through having stepped in a puddle of the stuff and then later having licked their feet clean...not much you can do about that.

In this as in all things, you can only do your best. Good luck.

Patrick. If you are going to train your dog on food refusal you have to do it exactly the way Lou suggested . It has to be done remotely. I can only tell you from my own experience. In my case it wasn’t food it was goose crap, same difference. When I started takeing the pup for walks in the park it was full of goose crap. It was gross to me but pattee’ for my pup. She was to young for a prong collar or e collar so I had to correct her the only way I knew wouldn,t cause damage. I kept picking her up by her back of her neck and shaking . Two miles of corrections she got the point. Eight months later she will never indulge while on lead, but if she’s loose and thinking I’m not looking she will help herself.. I agree that there are sick individuals out there. Last year in Chicago there was a period of time when someone was stuffing rat poison in hot dogs and spreading it in a park.As far as anti-freeze the only way I see training the dog is by putting it some container that wouldn't tip over and a cover with small holes .. The dog can stiff it , but can’t digest it. Prestone has a low tox antifreeze(whatever that means) I use it in my van. Maybe you can start with that. How do junk yard dogs survive? What makes them so smart that they don’t touch antifreeze?

Milt

Thanks Milt.