Is Your Dog Begging At The Table
Sunday afternoon and your having friends over for dinner. The house is perfect, the table is beautiful and the food smells and looks delicious.
Unfortunately, your golden retriever thinks so too, and is sitting up and begging for morsels off everyone’s plate, and if not rewarded, is attempting to take the food on his own. You may be king of your castle, but with your dog begging, it is not making you look too good at the moment. How could this have happened?
Sadly, this is not really the dog’s fault, and it started some time ago. Some horribly misguided individual who was trying to be a good pet owner did this while the pup was still very young, and trained your dog for this very behavior. Want to know who taught your dog this behavior? Do you know who it was? It was probably you, and or, members of your family.
Now take a moment to realize that you weren’t consciously training your pet for this unwanted behavior, and you did it with the best of intentions. Who could resist that sad little face looking up at you, for a morsel of food.
No one is blaming you, but the behavior is here now, and must be dealt with. Knowing how to fix the problem is easiest when you know how it started. Your dog learned this behavior from all those times when, however well meaning you were, the little scraps of food were tossed down to a cute little pup, who stared up with sad brown eyes, and left you overpowered with guilt, as you looked at his dish of dog kibble, and your plate filled with steak and potatoes.
Those moments when your kind-hearted generosity over stepped its boundaries, and created the begging monster that we find pushing your guests chair over today, for a bite of beef tip. All of this could have been prevented, by a simple act of will power then, but now you have a problem to deal with.
So how do we stop this obnoxious beggar? The first step is doing what you should have done when your little beggar was still a pup, and quit rewarding the behavior, by not giving in, and not paying attention to it, perhaps even confining your dog to its kennel, or a separate room during meal or snack times.
This suggestion is especially useful if you have young children in the household who tend to reward the animal with the foods that they do not favor. Make sure everyone in the household knows, not to share their meals with your dog, and follows this rule no matter what the circumstance.
When your dog isn’t rewarded in the manner he is accustomed to, the real battle will begin. He will decide that he isn’t receiving enough attention and begin to whine and howl loudly in complaint of the treatment.
Do not give in or the battle is lost, and will be harder in the next round. The process will take consistent work for several weeks, and one weak moment of slipping the dog a treat just to be nice, can ruin all the prior training, so standing your ground and enforcing the rule, of not giving meal time treats to your dog, is a must.
Some useful ideas for stopping the begging are appropriate to mention here. One great one is to feed the dog at the same time the rest of the family eats, preferably in a separate room. This way your dog has its own meal, and will not feel the need to take food from others in the household. If this is not an option, perhaps give your pet a toy to play with, keeping them occupied throughout mealtime.
No matter how you choose to handle the situation, consistent and rigid training is the only effective way to correct it. Every member and guest of your household must enforce the rules, or all your work will be for nothing. However, if you follow these rules, the dog begging will stop, and you will be blessed with a healthier pet, a happier household, and pride in your well-mannered canine friend.
Thought it was a hoot that I found this on a golden retriever site. Our little Stella, a goldendoodle, was fed once from the table and now always sits and stares at us while we eat. She doesn’t really bother but it isn’t good when we have company. This habit needs to stop and with these suggestions I’m sure we can do it. She also stares at me when I eat popcorn at night – was fed just a couple of times when a pup.
Our labradoodle has never been fed from the table or anywhere. And he never bothers us while we eat.
Moral of the story: Don’t EVER start feeding your dog from the table or anywhere!
Good tips there.
The thing with dogs begging at the table is that you can’t help but want to give them a little treat but this is sooooo bad.
Good point on do not give in, very important.
professional dog trainings are expensive specially if you hire those dog trainers that can teach your dogs lots of tricks :”;
Dog training does take some time and patience, but it is worth it in the long run. You can check out this link for some training books that I have hand picked.
http://the-golden-retriever.com/dog-training-books.html
Your are right, once they get a taste of table food, they will be back for more. I learned my lesson on that one many years ago. If you want to share a little of your food with your dog, put it in their dog dish where they normally eat, after you are done, and have left the table.