Hi my two year old has got a new habit of eating twigs and despite giving commands of 'leave'and 'no'. And trying to swap it for a more positive fun thing like a toy or some fun with me, he is still doing it. Any ideas how we can curb it please, as we live in a woodland area; so this is an issue (and im concerned about splinters entering internal organs). Thank you for any help, we appreciate it
Have you practised "leave it" at home and in the garden with less precious items? Might be you just need to build it up. I'm not so good at the training advice, but I do know that dogs don't "generalise" so what you teach in the garden doesn't work out in the park automatically, you have to move it to different areas to practice different scenarios. The other thing is keeping him constantly occupied with exciting surprise behaviours and games that makes YOU more interesting than a few twigs and sticks.
Are the twigs dangerous and unhealthy? If so, and if you cannot stop him, then you may need one of those muzzles where he cannot get anything into his mouth. I don’t recommend that, and am only making a suggestion if you are worried about him eating twigs as dangerous to his health.
I used to see a Lab in a muzzle - she was a seaweed eater & had been very ill with it. Bloody Coco will chomp down kelp stems - I avoid the beach when it's washed up. I went on Monday - there was none on the sand but we had to cross a narrow mound of it first. Coco grabbed a stem as he ran after his ball. He reached the ball, but just stood, munching the kelp. I ran after him, "leave" didn't work so I distracted him with the ball and I cast the stem down the river to the sea. This morning - 6 days later - that familiar dog-being-sick-noise at 7:30 - he chucked up 4 x 1 inch chunks before I steered him out. No more kelpy-beach for a while.
Unfortunately there isn't a quick fix to picking up twigs etc it really comes down to training. It sounds as if you need to work on the 'leave' around distraction but go back to basics of training it without a cue word to establish a look away/move away from the object and practice in different rooms the garden, outside the house building up as you go. As an additional measure work on the 'swap' for a treat of any item. If he's not willing to swap you need to increase the value of the treat to something that has greater value. The last measure is vigilance when out walking to try and divert or use the 'leave' cue before he picks up and reward for moving on. Yes, it will feel as if all you say is 'leave' but it will begin to work as the history of reward builds.
