I have an extremely greedy Retriever, Monty who is 11 weeks old. We have had him for almost 5 weeks and on the whole he is a little terror. He is so strong willed compared to my other dog but having said that he has been clean for over week (last night weed for the first time) and in general toilet training is pretty good. He was really noisy at night time to begin with but we are now down to about 30 seconds of barking and then he sleeps quiet all night instead of barking for about 2 hours, we have managed to stop this by completely ignoring him.
The problem I have now is barking when I am preparing his food (am and pm). I have tried ignoring him, shutting him outside, preparing his food and then leaving it on the side but whatever I try he just barks persistantly or charges round the house like a looney and jumping up the cupboards in the kitchen. Its quite hard to leave feeding because my 8 year old GS (Asha) sits nice and quietly for her food so I feel I am punishing her by making her wait. I do feed them in seperate rooms (either side of the baby gate) because he is so greedy and eats his within about 15 seconds where as Asha is very gentle and takes her time, if Monty gets a chance he will steal her food and she lets him, she has medicine in hers so I cant allow him to get hold of it. Should I let her eat hers as she waits quiet and leave him noisy in the kitchen until he is quiet or should I make them both wait so they are fed at the same time??
Yesterday he growled at me when he was eating so I have just consulted The Perfect Puppy to try and combat that one.
He is currently fast asleep at my feet and oh no butter wouldn't melt in that mouth would it!?!?

He is also scared to go out by himself in the garden, well I am not sure if he is scared but he wont go out to the toilet if I dont go out with him, even if Asha goes out. I am starting to put him out and shut the door for 5 mins, is this the right thing to do?

Hi Patches,
I'm a little confused here - you say he's noisy when you prepare his food, both am and pm, and he eats it very quickly. What is he like with his other meals, because I'm sure you realise a young pup like this needs 4 meals a day. Their stomachs simply aren't big enough to contain all the nourishment he needs in fewer meals than that. If he's only on two meals a day he must be ravenous!

He is on 4 meals a day but he does not have meat in his lunch or tea he just has Beta puppy and water and I can prepare this without him smelling it or realising I am doing this. The other meals, especially dinner takes a while as Asha has 3 large tablets that I have to break up and Metacam so it takes a little longer to prepare. If he does hear me preparing his other meals then he does go just as mad but I can usually sneak off and prepare them and then call him to me.
In the mornings I have started preparing his breakfast, leaving it on the side and then eating my breakfast but he is like a lunatic and wont stop barking.

You've tried several different methods to stop him - but how many times have your tried each one before trying something else? A dog learns that if he does A then B happens - your pup appears to have learnt that if he barks his supper appears. If you try ignoring then he already knows that barking makes food appear, so more barking is needed if you appear to be ignoring him (this is known as an 'extinction burst'). What he now needs to learn is that barking now doesn't get his food - infact it makes you stop! If you do this he will go through a similar extinction burst, but once he realises barking STOPS the meal preparation process, the barking will cease.

You might like to note that if he's being fed Beta Puppy at all four meals, that this is a complete meal and does not need any added meat - the added meat is increasing the levels of protein which at worst can lead to hyperactivity in some dogs, and at best is simply passed through the digestive system un used.

So when I am preparing his food and he barks I should put everything down and leave it untill he is quiet and then go back to it and do the same if he starts being noisy? I have tried the different methods for about a week before changing, (he has been barkjing over dinner since the day we got him). When he does eventually go quiet I normally count to 10 and if he stays quiet for that long I then feed him, whether it is leaving him quiet at the backdoor for the 10 seconds or where ever.

I introduced meat because Asha is on meat and he would spend more time at the baby gate barking and whining as I am sure the meat smells far better than beta. For the 2 meals I feed meat (am and pm) should I drop the beta all together. I normally feed a handfull of Beta and 3rd of a tin of meat (he only has a 3rd of a tin per day the 3rd of a tin is split between the 2 'main' meals so he actually has 1/6th of the tin in the one meal if that makes sense) and then a handfull of Beta for lunch and supper.
Asha (GS) was completly different when she was a puppy, we had alot of problems with her eating, she would have starved herself before choosing to eat (no exageration I promise,even the vet was at a loss as to how to make her eat her food) so to have a dog that likes his dinner is a whole new game to me so any advice would be appreciated.....

the one good thing about having a greedy dog who eats everything he gets the chance to is that it is making Asha think twice about leaving her dinner, she now eats the whole lot rather than walk away and let Monty have it, she is happy for me to remove it when she doesn't eat it but there is no way she is going to leave it for him to take!

What tinned meat are you giving? Is it a 'complete', or simply meat? If the latter, I would give a plain puppy meal with it, and not the Beta, because you'll otherwise be unbalancing the levels and he'll be getting too much protein, which is wasteful (and may well encourage coprophagia, which is a difficult problem to cure). They all seem to like the 'wet' foods better than the dry, so I'm not surprised he is so much more excited about it!

When he barks when you're preparing the food, stop immediately. When he's been quiet for a couple of seconds, start again, but be prepared to stop many times while you're getting his dinner ready. At least with a 'foodie' he'll be easy to train using treats!
:)

I thought about the training with food the other day, what a relief that will be. Asha would never take any food from us in training and the only 'treat' she will eat is bonio's. When she was a pup we were advised to try her on tripe (the real stuff) and cook it up. oh how it stank, she ate it twice and never touched it again, I wouldn't even like to think what Monty would be like if he even smelt the Tripe cooking!!

The meat is Pedigree puppy.

This pup actually sounds a great character, and no doubt you will find that life will not always be easy but that you would have it no other way :D

I would basically feed Asha when she is normally fed and not make her wait unless you do normally. Feed the pup only when he is quiet, and prepare his meal only when he is quiet. It may help to teach him this word around the house - for example if he barks at a bird and then stops, wait a couple of seconds and then say "Quiet, good quiet" and give a nice food reward, and so on. Gradually wait 4 seconds, then 6 ..... and vary it too. After some time he will understand the command and it may come in helpful when you are preparing his meal, but do ensure he never gets food or attention when he is barking :)

Lindsay

Well last night preparing dinner took half an hour!! I have decided that I will walk away even when I am making Asha's dinner because it might be a little confusing to him. Asha wasn't too bothered just looked a little bewildered as to why I kept picking the tin and knife up and then pretty much putting them down and walking away about 30 times!!!

Breakfast took 20 mins! He will learn! (I think??)

He's improving! Consistency will be vital here. Good luck!
:)

It's sounding promising, he may well try and increase the barking again, just incase it works, but if you are consistent he'll get the message :)

i'm not sure if you want to try this but i have done it with mine i only done it for a day and mine got the message.
My pup now 5 months started jumping at the table and whinning for her food when i was making it so when my older one got fed the same time as the pup, my older dog would get hers first then the pup would have to wait and as she saw the older was quite and got food she was noisey and didn't get food so she learnt to be quite or she would not get fed. So it might sound a bit harse but on that day she only got fed tice unstead of 3 times but it worked. Jealousy is a wonderful thing but only when it works for you, they do not like it when one gets food and they other doesn't so they then pick up on what that dog is doing and what they are doing wrong.
I hope this all makes sense to you.