Does Your Dog Beg?

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Does your dog beg?  If so I found this article by Wyatt Myers from Everyday Health and thought this information would be beneficial.  I have had dogs over the years that beg for different things.  I found the most common was food from the table or while you are cooking in the kitchen.  Wyatt has some good information and tips to help with that and how to not start that habit.  It is a very hard habit to stop once you start it for sure!  We all love our dogs and want to share everything with them, but table food isn't one of those things we need to share.  We will create obese dogs and then that runs into expensive trips to the veterinarians office.  No one wants that!

Where should you start? Before you can teach your dog to stop begging for food, you have to start with more basic dog obedience training steps, such as “sit” and “lie down,” says Beth Mullen, the owner of Dog Latin Dog Training in the Washington, D.C. area.

“If a dog hasn’t learned to say ‘please’ by sitting, you need to start there,” says Mullen. “With small, pea-sized treats in hand or in a waist treat pouch, stand still. When your dog sits — it may take a minute — give him a treat.”

Once your dog has mastered sitting, Mullen says that you can next ask your dog to lie down to receive these treats. Eventually, your dog will have these dog obedience commands mastered, and you can use the “lie down” command for when your family is at the dinner table. “During your dinner, ask the dog to ‘settle’ and give him a long-lasting treat or frozen Kong toy,” says Mullen. “Remember, no one said your dog has to eat from a bowl.”

As a last resort, Mayer says that a dog timeout might be needed to reinforce dog training and promote dog obedience. “I would remove the dog from the room for 10 to 20 seconds,” she says. “After the timeout, allow the dog back in the area, so he can make the better choice and be rewarded for it.”

Feeding Fido Food From the Table is a ‘Doggie Don’t’

If your previous approach was to give into the begging and feed your dog from your plate (and now you’d like to put a stop to this practice), you’ll need to be more patient with your re-training efforts.