Hi everyone, our 6 month old basenji is food obsessed and has unfortunately had an incident or two finding food scraps / chicken bones on the street and trying to consume (we've been able to remove quickly from his mouth). he is a city basenji and we live in an urban area.
his love of food has been great from training perspective since he is so highly food motivated, but challenging when taking him for walks. he is constantly pulling and sniffing around which means we often don't get a lot of distance covered during the walk. this is okay, because we have been doing clicker training and using commands like "focus" and "touch" for recall and its been working great. however our main concern is when he is too quick for us and grabs a piece of food or worse, a tossed out bone on the street. we have been using the "leave it" command and it works well if its a low value object (like a fluff or a weird stick). if its food related/high value, he doesn't let go and we have to take it out of his mouth.
has anyone had similar experiences with their b? if so, any tips or guidance would be greatly appreciated! we are starting to wonder if we should consider a muzzle for safety as he's caught chicken bones one too many times. this morning he actually tried eating a piece of plastic that he found (i was surprised because he usually only tries to consume food related objects) and when i tried to remove it from his mouth his bite caught my finger and drew blood