Written by Laure-Anne Visele, 24 March 2020
So my kid was annoyed with me as I’d kept using our traditional ‘leave it’ to teach the dog to leave things alone, instead of the new cue we’d replaced it with: ‘Expelliamus’.
What did I catch him doing? Only the cutest thing! He is throwing a paper plane, which he knows our dog can’t resist as he LOVES paper. And then, he says his cue and rewards the dog for leaving the paper.
After a few reps of that, the dog would massively anticipate and kiddo only needed to even approach the paper plane for the dog to let go happily.
It seems cute, but it should inspire you: teaching a rock solid leave it isn’t that hard. It’s a question of repetition.
Photo credit: Have you seen this wizzard? by James Seattle. License: CC BY 2.0
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