How to teach a dog to take food gently? - Page 2

ace , its really simple , dont reward unwanted behaviour , if they jump and snap , just dont give , as soon as he sits down or relaxes , quickly  give the food , but give it lower than his head is at that moment so he learns  to get down to get his reward instead of jumping up

good luck

ps   still waiting for your video  LOL

I had a similar issue with my male GS.  As he was the runt of the litter, food was a "woof it down as fast as you can" in the beginning. 

For taking food from my hand, I did similar to above, but I did not cover the food. 
I am a firm believer in "nothing in life is free."  Therefore, any hand food requires my dogs to first go into a command (sit or down).  That gets them into a clam waiting mode. 

I then taught them to take the food with their tounge only.  Taking food with the tounge (sp) requires a delicate touch on the dog's part that naturally becomes gentle.  I taught them this by starting with very small food; the size requires them to use their tounge (sp) to get.  When they did that, they got lots of praise with the word "gentle."  I then progressed to a larger size of food.  As soon as the dog opened their mouth wide, I say "no"; close my hand; wait for them to close their mouth; then give the command "gentle" and present the food.  After 2 -3 times, even my GS figured out to use his tounge to get the food and not his whole mouth.

Good luck.

Thanks to everyone for the advice and help as I will incorporate it.

Duke - I will have that video for you.  I just need someone to hold the camera. lol  Be warned, it won't be pretty!!  :)

Wow, I need to reread this thread several more times.  Just got back in from playing chuckit in the snow, using beef rollover as reward.  I was doing the fist method, which worked well for the most part.  Ace the Malinois (5mo old) gets pretty excited when playing chuckit and still manages to catch your fingers even with the fist method.  Near the end (running out of treats) I noticed drops of blood all over the snow!  At first I thought he'd bitten his tongue or something until I looked at my hand and found two fingers covered in blood!

Once I got inside and cleaned it up, it was actually a rather small cut but the snow made it look worse than it was.  Regardless, I've got to get better at this...

I agree with fawndallas in that anytime you are training a dog to take food gently from your hand you should wait until the dog is calm. If the sight of food makes your dog very alert and anxious you need to just wait this out. As puppies get older they will know that in order to get food or to be fed they need to be calm. Very key in not having fingers taken off .