Teaching a French Bulldog the Leave it Command

By: David Codr

Published Date: January 24, 2020

Tortilino - Teaching a French Bulldog the Leave it Command

For this Santa Monica dog training session we taught 2 year-old French Bulldog Tortellino the leave it exercise so his guardians can stop him from eating pine cones.

Teaching a dog the leave it command is pretty easy, but so, so helpful. Dogs get into all kinds of things as they explore with their mouths. Training a dog to leave it can help you keep your dog from eating something that can be harmful.

This was certainly the case with Tortellino who likes to eat a type of pine cone that caused him some internal bleeding. We started inside so I cold go over the basics of the leave it command, then headed outside to put the command to use.

Now in retrospect, I moved too fast, even for this tutorial video. The idea with the leave it command isn’t to cover it with your hand as I did at the end of the free positive dog training video above. Its to first establish the command as I did inside, then practice in progressively more challenging situations. Only then should you start to apply it to things you encounter on the ground.

Id like the guardians to practice the leave it command inside until they can get the dog to leave the treat without even needing to cover it up or hover. At that point, they can create a training scenario outside where they leave the cone on the sidewalk and approach it on leash. If Tortellino moves towards it, then they can give the leave it command and have him do the work, i.e. leave it alone.

Based on how well the guardian picked things up and the dedication of his humans, Im betting he will learn this super useful command in no time flat. Anyone can teach their dog the leave it command, even if you aren’t a professional French Bulldog dog trainer.

Another issue we didnt get to was Tortellino’s possible growing separation anxiety. I promised the guardian I would add a link to another session with my strategy to stop separation anxiety in dogs.

We wrapped up this in home Santa Monica dog training session with a roadmap to success video.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Categorized in:

This post was written by: David Codr