Episode #36 Drop It, Leave It or Both?

Two very important behaviors every puppy should learn are drop it and leave it. What do they mean, when do we use them and how do we start training our puppy to do them? Find out on today's episode. 

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speaker 0:   0:00
This is The Puppy Training Podcast Episode #36: Drop It, Leave It or Both? This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning as you train your own dog from home, and I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is The Puppy Training Podcast, and I'm your host, Amy Jensen.  

speaker 0:   0:28
Hi, friends. How's it going today? I hope you're having a wonderful day. Today, I want to explain the difference between two important behaviors, drop it and leave it, and when to use them. Sometimes it's one, the other, or even both, so I'm gonna explain that today to hopefully clarify things a little bit. But first, I want to give a shout out to Shannon. Thanks for listening to the podcast and thanks for your question that you send in today. I appreciated seeing that, and I had fun replying to you. Shannon asked a question about what she should do when her dog sees other dogs and starts to react to them, and she just has a young puppy. Sometimes even our young puppies will hear a dog barking or they'll see a dog, and they either get super excited or they get a little fearful, and we need to know the best way to handle it, so I sent Shannon over to #27 of the podcast. It's entitled reactivity, and if you have a dog who's doing similar behaviors, check that out. Also, it is the season of giving, and what better gift to give to someone getting a new puppy than an instruction manual? Who doesn't want an instruction manual for their brand new dog? We offer a lifetime membership to all the dog training resources anyone would ever need to train their own dog. It is basically a one-stop-shop. Our Online Puppy School lets you work with us no matter where you live, and we walk you through the puppy training process step by step, so please check it out if you haven't already at BaxterandBella.com, or send your friends and family there. It could just be the perfect Christmas gift you are looking for.  

speaker 0:   1:57
Now for the topic of the week: drop it or leave it or both. These are two very useful behaviors, and it's important that every dog understands these cues. If there's anything that you're gonna teach your dog, I feel like these should make the list and they should be included. Drop it means we want your dog to release something willingly from their mouth. Something they currently have in their possession, we want them to open their own jaws and release it. Now leave it means that your dog is going to turn their attention away from something they see and they want. So they don't currently have that item when we use the cue leave it. We noticed that our dog might be interested in something or we know something that he's going to want to get that we can then cue him, leave it, and we want his attention to turn back to us, and then we could do something else. So leave it means 'turn your attention away'. Drop it means 'release whatever you currently have'. Now, remember that when dogs see something they want, it's in their nature to get it as quickly as they can, and often times, if they're able to get it and their jaws are on it, they clamp down and they don't want to release it. Again, these are two very important behaviors and I recommend if you have a brand new puppy that we start teaching these within the first several weeks. This is a really important thing that we want them to be able to learn that it's okay to do, that it's not something they need to clamp their jaws down and hold the death grip on. Similarly, if they see something and it could be possibly dangerous, maybe we drop pills on the ground or maybe there's our kid has a candy bar and drops the chocolate on the floor or something like that, we want to be able to say, 'hey, leave it' and then our dog knows not to touch it, and we can go and clean that up. These are very important things to teach our puppies, and I suggest you start right away if you can. There are times when your dog gets something that we don't want them to have, a laundry stick, something that will hurt them or make them sick, especially around Christmas time. Please be careful with your dogs. There are things like candy, xylitol is found in a lot of candies these days, poinsettias, different plants, chocolate, lots of things from holidays that are exciting and come out that are puppies might want to get a hold of, so it's important that we teach them to drop it and leave it. Here's an example for you. Just this week, my kids received Hershey Kiss Christmas Countdown chains from Grandma and Grandpa. They look forward to these every year and bless Grandma and Grandpa's hearts, they make them for every grandchild every year. It's definitely a tradition. One of my children decided that the best place to hide hers from her siblings because, of course, she doesn't want them to eat hers, was in the Christmas tree. I didn't know this, and Boots sure was interested in the Christmas tree. This is several hours later and Boots is wandering around and I'm thinking, 'Why is he so interested in the back of the Christmas tree? He hasn't done that before'. Before I could do anything about it, he'd sniffed out this lovely Hershey Chocolate Chain and had it in his possession. As he came around the back of the Christmas tree, he suddenly appears with this long chain of Hershey kisses drooping from his mouth. A good drop-it was all I needed to save him from an unfortunate episode of an upset stomach. Luckily, we've been working on that with boots, we could say 'drop it', he knows that means release whatever you have on to the floor and then, of course, I paid him well for that behavior. The Christmas tree's another item. It's full of lots of exciting things. Those shiny bulbs, they probably look more like balls or toys to our puppies, sure are tempting. Our puppy might want to go and play with these items or try to snatch them from our trees, so that's where a good leave it would come in. If you see your puppy going for the Christmas tree and he doesn't yet have anything in his mouth, we could say leave it and he would know to turn his attention away from the tree and to move on with life.  

speaker 0:   5:42
How do we teach our puppies these two important behaviors? Let's talk about drop it first. One way that I love to teach this is with toys. I love to play the Swap-me game with my puppies. Basically what you do is you get a fun toy out and you toss it for your puppy, so get them engaged in it. Get them following the toy around and then toss it a few feet away. As your puppy pounces over to grab that toy, as soon as they have it in their mouth, I want to pull out a different toy and do your best to make the new toy more exciting than the toy they currently have. The second that your puppy releases the first toy or drops it from their mouth I want you to mark 'yes', and then toss the new toy for them to chase. Puppies love to chase things, and so that's a reward for them. As you toss this new toy away, that's very exciting to them, and they'll want to go chase that. Again, you're playing the swap-me game. You give them a fun toy, you get them engaged with it, you toss it away, they get to go chase it. The second they put it in their mouth, I want you to pull out a new toy, wave it around, make it look exciting, the second they drop the first toy from their mouth I want you to mark 'yes', and then squeak or toss the second toy so that they can go get that toy. And then while they're getting that toy, you can pick up the first toy and you can keep playing this game. That's a wonderful way to teach drop it to puppies. Basically, you're just playing a game together, but they're learning this action of release what's in your mouth for something better. That's a really important concept in puppy training.

speaker 0:   7:01
To teach a leave-it, I'm gonna have you place a dog biscuit on the ground and you're gonna want to start this game on the ground yourself. You're probably gonna want to sit on the ground so that you can cover that biscuit with your hand very quickly. We do not want your puppy to ever get the object that we're practicing leave-it with. Leave it means to turn your attention away from it. You don't get this item. I want you to show your puppy that biscuit because we want him to be enticed to get it. We want them to see what it is and to possibly like it. But we want you to be able to cover it up so that they can't get it. Again, sitting on the floor is gonna be the best place to start. Also having your puppy on a leash is helpful. Again you're gonna put a biscuit on the ground, cover it with your hand. The second your puppy stops pestering your hand, they're gonna probably try to lick at your hand, paw your hand, maybe even start mouthing you to try to get what's underneath of it, you just holdfast. Just stay there. Don't let them get that item. The second that they stop pestering you and they turn their head towards you, I want you to mark 'yes' and then give a different food reward from your other hand. Make it something good. We want him to realize that they stopped looking at whatever was on the ground, and when they looked at you, they heard the yes marker and something really yummy came out. That's going to be the key of this game. We want you to repeat this game over and over. Again, you're gonna put that food item on the ground, that biscuit, you're gonna cover with your hand if necessary. If you can leave your hand off of it and your puppy can see it, that's even harder. That would be the next step in this game. You're probably with a brand new puppy gonna have to start by covering it up. But again, the second your puppy leaves your hand alone and turns their head to you, so he's redirecting his attention off of what's on the floor toward you, you mark 'yes', give him a food reward from your other hand. Play that several times. Then you're going to advance this game to the point that, like we mentioned, you can move your hand from tenting the biscuit. Your puppy can actually see the biscuit on the ground, and we want him to look at the biscuit and then he's gonna look back at you, you mark 'yes', you give him a reward. I would do that round several times, at least 5 to 10 times. Get him really good at looking at the biscuit, looking at you, he gets yummy food. Again, make that food that you're rewarding him with, that he's actually getting to eat, really good. We want him to see that it's better to see something that he likes or wants, and it's always better to look at you instead. He's going to get more rewarded for that than to look at something he wants on the ground. The next step in this game would be to stand up. Now, instead of covering the biscuit with your hand, I want you to cover the biscuit with your foot. You're basically going to teach him the same concept. But again, puppies don't generalize well, so we have to help them learn that leave-it means leave-it. Whether I'm on the ground, whether I'm standing up, basically, we want you to turn your attention away from whatever it is in whatever position we're standing in or sitting in, and I want you to look at me, so we're going to progress this game to leave it when you are standing, so you're gonna cover the item with your foot instead of your hand, but you're now standing up. We still expect that if we're standing, this is gonna be more realistic of what it will actually look like if you're out on a walk or something, but you're standing up your puppy's by you, they see something on the ground, cover with your foot if necessary because we absolutely don't want our puppy to get that item, but then, as soon as your puppy turns his attention to you, that yummy reward comes out with the other hand and he learns, 'I see something I want on the ground, but if I look to my owner or look to the person that I'm with, then I get something super rewarding'. The next step in that game is I want you to progress it to putting the object on the table. Possibly a coffee table or something low enough that they could steal it if they wanted to, but again, they're going to see it, and then we want them to redirect their attention towards us. Use your hand to tent that treat if necessary. Every time we make this game a little harder, we might have to take a few steps back in the progress. You might have to go back to covering the biscuit with your hand on the table, but you eventually want to get to the point where he can see the biscuit on the table without your hand covering it, and he still turns his attention toward you. Even harder, for all of those of you who like a challenge, take this outside. Obviously, we need to practice all of these behaviors in many different circumstances in areas in order to completely generalize these things for our puppies. So yes, practice outside. Practice with different things. Maybe it's no longer a little dog biscuit, maybe now we're using a sock or some sort of dirty laundry. Maybe we're outside using a pine cone. I know a whole bunch of golden retrievers who are fans of pine cones. Do any of you know any? How about doodles? Love pine cones? How about squirrels? How about cats? How about birds? Can you call your dog off of these things? Can they see a bird and you say leave it and they turn their attention back toward you? Wouldn't that be an amazing skill? You guys can totally do this.  

speaker 0:   11:40
So that's how you get started. I know that's not super great detail, but it's enough to get you all going. If you would like more ways to train these things or ways to make them harder and to get your puppy to be better at them, then I encourage you to check out our Online Puppy School at BaxterandBella.com. We would love to help you with our program. All right, you guys, that's what I have for you this week. I hope you have a wonderful week. Enjoy your puppies. Have fun with training, and I will talk to you next week. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my site BaxterandBella.com to contact me.