How do yopu train for food refusal? I have a male that thinks he is a garbage disposal. He would rather get his food out of the trash or of the side of the road. When I try to stop him, it's like I said don't chew, swallow! I also hope to compete in ring sport with him.

One way is to have your dog on a leash, with prong collar snug, and have someone toss food in front of him. As it sounds from your post, your dog will go for the food. Once he does this give a no and a slight correction with the prong. Now if he gets it in his mouth I would get it out before he is able to swallow. He won't forget you grabbing his mouth and going in after the food. While your removing the food give stern NO, repeating NO until he spits it out. Then praise him once he spits it out.

You may need to give a level 5 on the prong once the food is tossed to sway his thinking a bit before he opens his mouth.

Another way is to have food in your hand and attempt to give him the food and the slightest movement from him tell him no and cover the food up. With my current GSD I did not give him the treat until I could touch his nose with it and then give him the ok to take it. If the food did not reach his nose.......he didn't get the treat.

With this, if food were to drop on the floor now all I have to say is 'no' in a normal voice and he does not touch it.

What kind of dog? If you are thinking of doing ring, the garbage disposal thing is definately not good. At the higher levels there is food on the field while you are trialing. Be careful using compulsion to teach the dog not to eat food. During the food refusal, they have to remain in position. You see dogs losing points from avoidance. There are a couple different ways to teach this, I would go to your local ring club and have them help you. They will be able to see the dog and it's temperament and give you better advice as to which way to go.

Thanks I've done it before with another dog but not for competition. I hated it when it came to feeding time and before I could put the bowl down he had his head in there sometimes spilling the food.
I was just being lazy and hopeing to get more insight, options or a faster method. I get alot of different opinions off of the board and I use bits and pieses here and there. I have someone that's giving me a lot of great advice. I'm just being impatient and I have to travel a good distance to train with him. Six hours both ways. I will do it with No compulsion if at all possible.

Hi,

Thomas Barriano posted this method on another forum for food refusal.

start off using gatorade bottle caps. Teach the dog to leave the bottle caps. I used a clicker and taught my dog to look away from the caps. Then I placed her in a down, and tossed them at her. Clicking and rewarding everytime she looked away. I got it to the point where I can toss them at her, they hit her and she just lifts her head and looks away.

Then he said to start.. marinading them... keep the caps in a bag with hotdogs and such. I backed up a couple of steps, and stood very close to the dog when I introduced the hotdogged up caps. Built it back up again to where I could throw them and she would ignore them.

I then put peanut butter and hotdogs (attached with peanut butter lol), and while she did look more interested.. a quick "no!" and she left it alone again.

I also "chained" together the tosses. I started with a one reward for one toss system, them moved to a two tosses for one reward, then three, etc..I worked up to 10 tosses with the cap. When I started with the caps that had food in them, I dropped back down to one toss, and worked back up again. The second time took very little time, as she had already caught on to the idea. I also dropped back down to one toss one reward when I started with the real food, and I also made the initial rewards BIG time.. not just a hot dog, but a chunk of left over steak, or whatever I had left over from supper. I would use the big jackpot treat for two or three times, then start to scale it back down to normal.

Overall the method has worked awesome for me and my dog! And my dog can inhale her meal in about 3 seconds flat, and is super high in her food drive. She is quite solid on her food refusal. It took me and my dog about a month (4 and a bit weeks, training roughtly 5-10 minutes a session once a day).

Happy Training

Tamara McIntosh

Tamara...out of curiosity did you see your dog react the SAME way (look away) when working on a field with food already present and laying all over the field...no commands or cues from you? ie., during OB?, protection work?, during agility? Or what about when someone extends their hand with food? ie., they don't throw it...?? Have you tried this in other scenarios...away from her typical training field? at home...backyard, in the house etc...using a kid or spouse? or neighbour? Or when your dog is under absolutely NO command, IOW, just being a dog and doing its own thing...Have you tried putting a 'yummie' piece of steak in the backyard and letting your dog outside for a 'pee'...without you?? And he/she finds the 'steak'...what then??

Just wondering...Just trying to estabslish the 'reliability' of this with different variables...And the ability for the training to carry over...

Thanks in advance!

B

Hello Brigita,

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out of curiosity did you see your dog react the SAME way (look away) when working on a field with food already present and laying all over the field no commands or cues from you? ie., during OB?, protection work?, during agility?

My dog ignores food on the field/floor while training. Since I started her training as a puppy, she has been taught not so much to ignore the food, but to focus on me and her training. There is very little time for her to be searching the ground for food.

 Quote:

Or what about when someone extends their hand with food? ie., they don't throw it...?? Have you tried this in other scenarios...away from her typical training field? at home...backyard, in the house etc...using a kid or spouse? or neighbour?

As I do not have a training field as such yet, all her training has been done in varing locations. We train in kid parks, at home, at obedience classes, with other dogs around, with our two cats being pests and licking the lids in front of her, kids/adults/strangers throwing/tossing.

We have trained in Petsmarts on saturdays when there are classes, people, kids, dogs, noise, etc. Regardless of what venue a person is training for it is important to try to train/expose the dog to as many distractions as possible. Trial days have all those distractions and some times more, and it would be unfair to the dog to trial without giving it experience under distractions.

The only one we have not tried as of yet is during protection. When her protection training in more advanced, I do plan to proof many of her obedience exercises with a decoy present (food refusal, heeling, retrieves, positions, etc). I saw an amazing video of a dog doing positions with two decoys tossing a rock filled milk jug over the dogs head. That of course would be the ultimate goal for me to train towards with her obedience training.

 Quote:

Or when your dog is under absolutely NO command, IOW, just being a dog and doing its own thing...Have you tried putting a 'yummie' piece of steak in the backyard and letting your dog outside for a 'pee'...without you?? And he/she finds the 'steak'...what then??

The pupose of my post was responding to a question on methods for training the food refusal. I have no interest in training my dog in the avenue of "poison proofing" which sounds more like what you have asked.

Seeing as in french ring my dog will never see a scenario as you just put forth, I have not and will not be training for it. Therefore I have no experience nor opinion of how to train for such a senario.

 Quote:

Just wondering...Just trying to estabslish the 'reliability' of this with different variables...And the ability for the training to carry over...

The "reliablity" of this method depends solely on the trainer. The time and effort you put in, is the time and effort that you get from the dog in the end. And while it did not take me long to get the intial behaviour with my dog, I still train it at least 2 times a week and try to add different variables every time.

Hope this answers your questions.

Tamara McIntosh

>>Seeing as in french ring my dog will never see a scenario as you just put forth, I have not and will not be training for it. Therefore I have no experience nor opinion of how to train for such a senario.


***yes and that's pattern training...I was speaking of PROOFING the dog...only then will you be sure the dog understands...

B