A chicken bone on the footpath in Bondi. A bait station behind a bin in Newtown. Half a kebab outside the pub on a Sunday morning. Sydney footpaths are covered in things that will cost you eight hundred dollars and a night at the emergency vet, and your dog will find them at nose height before you see them at all.
That's what the leave it command is for. Not the party trick where a biscuit sits on a paw. The moment on the street, with something moving toward your dog's mouth, when you have about one second. Luke Buchanan, Owner of The Toe Beans Co and Sydney's Puppy Trainer, teaches it in five stages for exactly that reason, and almost everyone who says their dog knows leave it has stopped at stage one.
Leave it and drop it are not the same command
Leave it means do not pick that up. Drop it means let go of what is already in your mouth. They are two different skills, taught separately, and owners run them together constantly.
The difference matters because of what happens when you get it wrong. If your dog has already grabbed the chicken bone and you shout leave it, you have used a cue that means nothing in that situation. Your dog either ignores you, which weakens the cue, or swallows faster, which is the outcome you were trying to prevent.
| Leave it | Drop it | |
|---|---|---|
| When you use it | Before contact | After it is already in the mouth |
| What you are asking | Disengage and look at me | Open your mouth and release |
| What you trade | Nothing, they never had it | Something better, always |
| Fails because | Never generalised to a moving object outdoors | Owner reaches in, so the dog learns to swallow |
Teach leave it first. A dog with a reliable leave it needs drop it far less often, because most of the dangerous things never reach the mouth.
What leave it is actually asking the puppy to do
Leave it is not asking your puppy to resist temptation. It is asking them to disengage from the thing and look at you, because looking at you is what pays.
That distinction changes how you teach it. If you frame it as self-control, you end up staring at your dog daring them not to move, which is a battle you will eventually lose on a street with a hot chip in it. If you frame it as a redirection, the cue becomes information: that thing is not available, this other thing is, look here.
So the behaviour you are conditioning is the head turn. Object appears, dog looks away from it and back at you. Once that loop is automatic, the value of what is on the ground stops being the deciding factor, which is the whole point.
The five stages, in order
Each stage only starts when the one before it is boring. If your puppy fails twice at a stage, you have moved too fast, so go back one and rebuild rather than repeating the failure.
Stage one, closed hand, no words
Put a treat in your fist and hold it out. Your puppy will lick, nudge, paw and possibly gnaw at your hand. Say nothing. Do not move your hand away and do not tell them off, both of those turn it into a game.
The moment they back off, even by a centimetre, even accidentally, mark it and reward from your other hand. Never from the fist. The fist is the thing being left, and rewarding out of it teaches your puppy that pestering the fist eventually works.
Ten or fifteen repetitions across a couple of days and most puppies start backing off deliberately.
Stage two, adding the cue
Only now does the word go on. Say leave it once, calmly, as you present the fist, then reward from the other hand when they disengage.
Once is the rule. A cue you repeat four times is a cue that means nothing on the first ask, and the first ask is the only one you get on a footpath. If nothing happens, wait, then reset and try again rather than escalating your voice.
Stage three, the floor
Move the treat to the ground under your shoe. Same cue, same reward from the other hand. When that is reliable, take your foot off and leave it uncovered, ready to cover it again if your puppy dives.
This is where most people find out their stage one was not solid. A treat on the floor is a completely different picture to a fist, and dogs do not generalise between them automatically. That is normal, not a setback.
Stage four, movement and distance
Now make it harder in the two ways that matter outdoors. Roll the treat across the floor rather than placing it, because a moving object triggers a chase response that a stationary one does not. And step away, so you are asking from a metre back rather than standing over it.
Add one variable at a time. Moving object with you close. Stationary object with you at distance. Then both. Skipping to both at once is the most common reason stage four falls apart.
Stage five, the street
Take it outside, on lead, and start somewhere boring. A quiet footpath with a treat you have placed yourself, so you control the difficulty.
Then work up to real finds. Walk past a discarded wrapper at four metres, cue, reward, keep walking. Then three metres. Then two. Distance is your dial, and if your dog cannot do it at two metres you are not near enough to a failure to learn from, you are past their threshold, which is the point where calm behaviour stops being available to them.
This stage is the whole reason for the article. A leave it that only works in your kitchen is a party trick. Most owners stop somewhere around stage three and are then surprised when it fails outside the bottle shop. There is more on managing that environment in the piece on what actually happens in Sydney dog parks.
Why food out of the hand is a trap
Rewarding from the same hand that holds the forbidden item teaches your puppy that pestering that hand eventually pays, which is precisely the behaviour you are trying to remove.
It is a small mechanical detail and it undoes the whole exercise. The dog is not learning leave it. They are learning that persistence at a closed fist opens it, on a delay. Then you take that dog to a footpath, where nothing opens on a delay, and the cue evaporates.
Two hands, always. One holds the thing being left. The other pays. Keep them separate for the entire first fortnight and the habit sets properly.
The three mistakes that break it
Leave it usually breaks for one of three reasons, and none of them are the dog being stubborn.
- Repeating the cue. Leave it, leave it, LEAVE IT. Each repetition teaches your dog that the first one is optional. Say it once and let the silence do the work.
- Only ever practising with food. The things that actually need leaving on a Sydney street are not treats. Practise with socks, tissues, a shoe, a stick, a wrapper. A dog who has only ever left biscuits has learned to leave biscuits.
- Rewarding late. The window is about two seconds. Reward at four and you have rewarded whatever they did at three, which is often looking back at the thing.
There is a fourth, and it is not really a mistake so much as a shortcut people are sold. Some trainers will tell you to correct the grab, with a lead pop, a spray, a shout, or a hand in the mouth. Don't. Punishing a dog for taking something teaches them to take it faster and swallow it before you arrive, which turns a manageable situation into an obstruction surgery. It also makes your approach a threat, so the next time they find something genuinely dangerous, they take it away from you rather than toward you. We don't use aversives at The Toe Beans Co, and this is one of the clearest cases of why: the correction produces the exact emergency it was meant to prevent.
When leave it fails and you need drop it instead
When it is already in their mouth, stop using leave it and trade instead, because a dog who has learned that your hand takes things away will swallow to keep them.
Say nothing and slow down. Walking briskly at a dog with something good in their mouth starts a chase, and they win a chase. Get something better, a piece of chicken, a favourite toy, and offer it as a swap. Mark the moment the mouth opens and let them have the swap properly rather than snatching.
If it is genuinely dangerous, a bone, a cooked skewer, something toxic, close the doors so it cannot become a lap of the house, and trade with the best thing in the fridge. Never prise the jaw open. That is how the next item gets swallowed on sight, and it is also how people get bitten by dogs who have never bitten anyone.
Manage the environment while the cue is still being built. Bins with lids, socks off the floor, a scan of the footpath ahead of you rather than at your phone. Management is not cheating, it is what keeps your dog alive while the training catches up. The seven commands every puppy should learn first covers where leave it sits in the wider sequence, and the pieces on puppy obedience training and teaching a puppy to stay deal with the two skills that leave it leans on most.
Want help putting this into practice?
The Toe Beans Co runs a free SKOOL community where Sydney dog owners get access to training guides, Q&As, and direct support from Luke. It's free to join.
Upcoming puppy schools in Sydney
Luke runs regular puppy schools across Sydney, with venues in Paddington, Edgecliff, Zetland, Alexandria, Marrickville and Neutral Bay. All six are taking bookings, and anyone in Sydney can attend any location. The full programme details cover what each block includes.
Check upcoming dates and book your spot →
Frequently asked questions
How long does leave it take to teach?
Most puppies get stages one and two within a week of short daily sessions, and stages three and four take another two to three weeks. Stage five, a reliable leave it on a real street with a real find, takes a few months of graded practice. Progress is gated by reliability rather than by the calendar.
My puppy grabs it and runs. What now?
Stop chasing, because chasing is the reward. Say nothing, close the doors so it cannot become a lap of the house, and trade for something better. If the item is harmless, simply waiting quietly often works on its own, since plenty of puppies drop things once the game stops being available.
Should I ever take something out of my dog's mouth?
Not by prising the jaw open. Reaching in teaches a dog to swallow fast and to guard, and it is how people get bitten by dogs with no bite history. Trade for something better instead. If your dog has swallowed something genuinely dangerous, that is a phone call to your vet rather than a training problem.
