Buddy has a solid "leave it" 98% of the time. The other 2% of the time is when he is let out of his crate and he goes for Bella and Banzai's dishes (Buddy gets raw and eats very quickly, Bella gets kibble and raw sometimes and tends to enjoy her morsels whereas Banzai will wait until you turn a year older before finishing a meal, therefore, Buddy and Bella are crated for mealtimes as Banzai graduated from cratedom a long time ago).

I know the easy solution would be to simply pick up their dishes so that he can't get to them, but I want any command that we teach any of our dogs to be rock solid. I've thought his behavior may be due to some nutritional deficits in his diet (and I will soon find out when Mordy can fit me in her schedule ) but I really do want to proof this "leave it" command.

Every time we use the command, he is rewarded for leaving it by whatever seems appropriate for the situation. For example, if it's a squeaky from a toy that he destroyed and I tell him to leave it, he gets rewarded with another toy. If he picks up some type of food that he's not supposed to have or tries to go for some human food or something to that effect, he is rewarded with a treat of his own when he does infact leave it.

I don't know how else to proof this? And I know I can fix it all by picking up the dishes, but there are some things he absolutely can not have due to allergies and I want to be able to say "leave it" and have him do it 100% of the time. Is this wishful thinking? Am I doing something wrong? Should I try something else?

TIA

Premack.
Teach him that leaving it doesn't necessarily mean he won't get it. It might mean he'll get a reward and then be given the exact thing he was told to leave. This really helps strengthen behvaiors in thing where you're asking the dog to leave something that is higher value in his world than anything else you can offer.
eg. leave it, reward, ok, GET IT.

KaeJae has a great "leave it", but I can't stop him from sneaking into Gina's food....not sure that I could ever get him to stop...what does work is when I say "leave it" and he ignores me, I do a very loud and stern "ahhhhhhhhhhhhh" and he looks up to see what I am doing and when he does, I do a very loud and stern "leave it" and that usually will work, but he's very food driven as is probably your dog. Just keep working on it, is what I say...we do leave it/take it exercises everyday and he has to go in a sit stay and leave it when I put his dinner down...so just keep working on it, I bet it will improve.

We've done that, sammy, with hot dogs. High value treats in this house so I will work on that some more.

I can clap my hands or give a loud "aahhh" but Buddy is NOT phased where there is food he wants.

My dogs are so complicated.

Nah not complicated. That's totally normal.
Remember to manage the situation well enough during the training phase that your "leave it" cue is always successful. Or that if the rare occasion it isn't successful, that you can get the food before the dog does. So build the behavior up gradually building on successes and preventing failures from happening. Otherwise "leave it" just means hurry up and decide if it's of high enough value to snarf up fast or low enough to leave and have a peice of hot dog.

Yep, that's how I trained my Pip! ! "Leave it" means "check it out" and "Leave it NOW!" means "eat it really really fast and dodge out of Connie's way."

And boy, once that's trained, it's next to impossible to un-train!

Oh no, Connie,

Thanks for the advice, we are going to work on it with him some more.

Last night he got my husbands steak off of the counter. Oh boooy... maybe he is revisiting his teenager years?

Thank doG I'm not the only one who trained their dog this way! I learned my lesson and Havana has a nice leave it, but Cousteau is quite frankly embarrassing.