# Training food refusal- poison



## Muskeg (Jun 15, 2012)

I just heard about a local SAR dog that was poisoned with anti-freeze laced chicken left in the yard. 

Does anyone train their dogs to only eat from their hand or their dog bowl? I've trained "leave it" but I have to be there and closely monitoring to have that be effective. The dog that was poisoned was just in the yard behind his house, where generally a person isn't closely monitoring, the dog, especially at night when it is 6 degrees out.

The fastest way I could think of would be to set the dog up to fail by leaving some chicken or other food in the yard or along the trail, and use an e-collar without any verbal correction so the dog wouldn't eat even if you weren't there to issue a "leave it" command. Basically teach avoidance of any food not given to the dog by the owner.

I believe Bart Bellon went this route (although this was back in the day and they used bird shot rather than electricity) to prevent his dogs from being poisoned by eating stuff off the ground when he was growing up in Africa. 

I understand there are pitfalls with this type of training, and was wondering how or if people train this. In the mean time I'll do a yard check before letting my dogs out, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to train my dogs to only eat food I give them just in general, and when we are out on the trails.


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## Magwart (Jul 8, 2012)

Best thing you could do right now would be to be out there with them, and keep them inside when you aren't home.


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## llombardo (Dec 11, 2011)

My female GSD will not take food from anyone except family. She wasn't trained to do this, she just does. Periodically I toss meat in the yard to test them. They are all ok with leave its, strong leave its for the goldens. My goal would be to have all of them ignore it like my female GSD does.


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## dogma13 (Mar 8, 2014)

I read somewhere about wiring up meat with low voltage electric fencing to train guard dogs so they couldn't be poisoned.I don't think anything would keep my dogs away from some nice smelly road kill if they were left unsupervised though.


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## Pax8 (Apr 8, 2014)

I don't think you need to do anything super aversive to have a strong leave it or teach a dog a havit of just leaving things alone that are not given to them. It took a long time, but I built a very strong leave it with mine as well as an unspoken assumption that any ground food was off limits unless I specifically told him to take it. I've tested in out before by leaving chunks of chicken on a plate in the middle of the floor while I was gone at work. Recorded it just to see. He didn't touch it once. And just to make sure he's not looking for if it's on a plate, I've also dropped a chunk of roast beef on my way out the door without saying anything. Same thing, it was untouched when I got home eight hours later.


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## Debanneball (Aug 28, 2014)

I could open a can of cat food, put it in the kitchen floor, tell Stella to leave it, it could be there all day and she would not touch it unless I said 'good girl'.. Outside on our walks, if she was really sniffing, I just said 'kaka'..she left it. She would not take food or treats from friends or strangers, only me, and she would not eat her food until I said the magic words 'good girl'.


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