Thor has known Leave It and Drop It for quite some time, but he has been, shall we say, recalcitrant at times when we are in the park. When I tell him to Drop something, I can look into his beady little eyes and see his brain working out if it's worth it to run away from me and eat his discovery anyway.
I've been working on reinforcing the command by giving him a treat when he obeys Leave It or Drop It, which is working quite well. However, he seems to have cottoned on to the fact that he will get more than one treat if he Drops an item multiple times. Today, he ran over to me with a chicken bone and dropped it, picked it up, dropped it, picked it up... I started to feel scammed.
I know I could only treat him the first time he Leaves it and then just use disapproval... I don't know. He'll also leave the vicinity, then return a few minutes later and act all surprised that hey, there's a chicken bone here! Is there a way to train him that "Leave It" means "Leave It Alone Forever"?
I don't think I will ever understand how a dog can be so dumb and so smart at the same time. Well, I guess he IS smart, just not at the things I want to teach him.
