THIS HURTS!
Giving a chomper food is painful. My dog Raven needed to take a step back in training for me to re-teach her how to take training food with ease. So I stopped training the behavior we were working on, and for a couple of sessions, we worked on taking the dog training food nicely and in a polite manner minus any pain to my palm.
I wiped some chicken fat on my palm, and offered her my palm. When she licked it, I marked her good choice and gave her a piece of dog training food off the palm of my hand. I was working fast to get the palm licking to merge into licking the food up.
Once Raven licked five times in a row, just before she licked my hand, I’d say “Easy,” and marked with a “Yes!” (What is marking?) I quickly put food in the same palm and said, “Easy.” If she came at me with anything more than a lick, I folded my hand and moved it away. After a few seconds, I tried again until she took the dog training food with a lick after I said “Easy.” We practice several sessions, until she got the hang of it.
As we moved back into training regular sessions, when she got excited, I would remind Raven to take training food politely with my cue “Easy.” If she chomped anyway, I would escort her to a timeout, into her crate, which would end our fun training session. She’d have no more chances at earning that delicious training food until the next session.
The main thing is patience, perseverance and consistency. If you let your dog get away with chomping, then she’ll take a chance to do it again. So if she does chomp after you’ve trained her to go easy and you give her the “easy” cue, then you must put her in a timeout. How long? It depends on your dog. Ten minutes may work fine. Just make sure she’s calm when you let her out. The goal is to be consistent with the timeouts everytime.
If you have a chomper dog and need help with teaching her to control chomping food from your hand, contact Outsmarting Dogs today. Taking food nicely from the palm of a person’s hand is part of impulse control dog training and Outsmarting Dogs has a wonderful board-and-train program for dogs who lack self-control. We can add taking food nicely to your dog’s board-and-train program.
Find out how much fun it is to train with food and games. Become a client of Outsmarting Dogs board-and-train program! We never use pain to train. We outsmart dogs instead!
Helen Verte Schwarzmann
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Certified in Training and Counseling
Certified Pet Dog Trainer-Knowledge Assessed
Certified Trick Dog Instructor
AKC Canine Good Citizen/CGC and STAR Puppy Trainer and Evaluator
Your Board-and-Train Dog Trainer for Fort Myers, Lee county, Naples, Collier county, and southwest Florida
