Awesome method for food refusal

For all of my obedience trained dogs I used to use a gradual method to teach food refusal which would take a couple of long lessons, but recently I've learnt of a new which I tried on my kelpie and collie tonight.
Basically, you wait until it's dinnertime then sit down with the bowl of kibble in your lab. Take one peice, offer it to the dog on a flat palm. As soon as the dog moves for it, close your hand.The dog will sniff, paw, lick and maybe offer a few sit and downs. Ignore everything until the dog backs off from the hand, or turns it's head away. Then say "yes!" and open your hand. I've been practising for ten minutes and both dogs will refuse food in my open palm until I say "take it!"
It's a really good lesson in teaching them self control.

Oh, I forgot to mention. Leave the closed hand at the dogs level so they can attempt to force it out of you.They need to learn that jumping for it/nosing it and pawing don't get it out. Only waiting for the take it signal gets the reward.

This worked great for my little treat-obsessed monster, it only took Dakota a couple of tries to figure out that standing calmly (as opposed to what he usually does - jumping around and whining) would get me to let him have the treat. Thanks for sharing that, Bridey!

It's magic isn't it! Glad I stumbled onto it, a trainer friend told me about it. It's the second day now and I attached "leave it" to the command, and I can leave stuff on the floor to. How neat. We're always learning arn't we?

I taught leave it by placing a treat on the floor and when the dog went for it saying, "no" and bringing them to me. They had to wait until I told them to eat it. It has worked well and now I can drop something on the floor, say "leave it" and all three dogs turn away from whatever I have dropped.

.hjhhhh