Hello!!
I've been trying to train wheeler (the food addict) around the dinner table but Im finding it rather difficult. Hes Ok when its just me eating there but whenever he sees my dad eating he will go and try and eat off his plate because he knows dads left side doesnt work!
Im trying to get him out of it by putting his blanket down and making him lie on it whilst we eat and then I'll put a treat in his bowl after but he only lies on the mat for about a minute before getting up and sniffing around the table. This means we have to put him out in the garden every meal time which I hate doing especially when its cold and raining! I've also tried giving him knotted bones to keep him occupied but that doesn't work either!
Could any body give me some ideas of how to train him around the dinner table? Thanks for any advise!        

I think if you make sure that you never (ever) give anything from the table then he will give up. It takes a while but once he realises that nothing ever comes whilst you are at the table, he will get tired and try something else. 

Work on his down/stay at other times....while you're watching TV or whatever. Gradually increase the length of time he must stay. And periodically, every minute or so give him a treat and say, "Good down, good stay." He needs to remain there though until you give him the release word, like "OK" or whatever you use. So, again (while he's learning) give the command, "down....stay." Just don't expect him to stay for too long at first. But it will improve if you periodically praise him during the down stay.

Then introduce a mild distraction, maybe someone else walking past him or a toy that he can see.

Then try it at the dinner table. Do get up from time to time and give a little treat, but NOT anything you're eating. Give one of his kind of treats and go to another place in the kitchen to get it. Don't bring it straight from the table. But make him stay. Follow through if he gets up. Just take him back to his spot and replace him in the down. Insist. Be consistant. Never waver, no matter if it's disruptive to people sitting there eating. Just explain at the beginning that this is what you'll be doing during the meal. He'll learn. Mine all did. Dobe pup not perfect yet. But other three stay on a rug 8 - 10 feet away the whole meal time. Little Chi girl not the sharpest tool in the shed either. But Chi mix boy....very bright but stubborn and Lab learned a long time ago and Dobe almost reliable. LOL.

So, good luck.

Carrie

Yes, I agree with never ever giving table food. My Siberians have never tasted any kind of people food other than Velveta cheese, which they get if they have to take medication. They can smell the food but have never known what it tastes like and so don't want it too horribly bad.

My Kieron used to be very bad at begging, though. She wouldn't try to help herself, but she would sit on the floor next to me and just beg with her eyes. It was horrible to see because I so wanted to give her a bite to eat. But, though this may sound harsh, I just raised my voice and told her to go lay down in the living room, pointing in the direction she was to go. Whenever I raised my voice, I never shouted, just a little louder than usual. Kieron knew this meant that she wasn't going to get any attention and so gave up. She now sleeps in the living room where she is supposed to be while we eat. =)

Houdini has never really begged, but I had to teach him to not do it at all by doing the same thing I did to Kieron. It only took a week or so for him to figure out that he wasn't getting a bite of any kind. Instead of laying in the living room with Kieron, he lays behind my chair and takes a nap there until I'm done.

I have taught them though that when we eat dinner, they get a treat afterwards. Every night after I put my plate away, I give each of them a milkbone cookie. They really seem to like the rules around the house. :)

OOh I wish you would train my husband !! - he's ALWAYS feeding the dogs at the table and it drives me mad - he also always saves a piece of his dinner for the dogs - now we have 6 dogs I have to give him double helpings to make sure ther's enough to go round.!  When he's away the dogs never beg from me and I have never fed them food from my plate but he's just a soft touch for those big brown eyes !

Yvonne

LOL Yvonne, i can just imagine that scene :D

Another suggestion, Sarah, would be to keep a special treat pot handy and again get him to lie in a special spot (not close to your dad). Show him the treat pot and every once in a while give him one. Give him the treats in fairly quick succession at first and then over the weeks gradually make the spaces further apart.

If he moves, get him to lie down again and then give him a treat. Make sure he never gets food  from your dad's plate or he will find that rewarding enough to try again.

What should hopefully happen is that eventually, he will see the treat pot as a cue to go to his special spot in hope of a treat. Eventually you should be able to jsut reward him at the end of the meal and he should lie there all the time.....:)

I've had success with my other Belgians teaching the lie down method as suggested above, but with my current girl have tried this method (i use the clicker but you can do without ) and find it works well, as soon as she sees the treat pot put in a certain place she lies down.

Lindsay
X

I can't imagine why dogs need to be in the room when you are eating!

Lol, you'd have a heart attack at my house seeing my dog on the same chair when we're eating!

I tried my best to train my OH but he insisted on feeding Millie bits from his plate and leaving her bits, and (worst of all, this drives me insane) letting her lick the plate after he has finished.  She knows she only gets this treatment from him though and knows she will never get any food from my plate and if, on the rare occasion I save her something, I get up after I've finished and put it in her bowl.  Anyway, we don't use our dining table and eat on our laps on the settee, sitting at opposite ends.  So, naturally, as soon as we sit down to eat Millie jumps up in the middle and lays there keeping an eye on our progress.  She is very good, she may sniff the air to find out what we've got, but she knows she has to lay there still in the middle until we've finished, but it drives me mad and I want her to be on the floor when I'm eating (yet, thinking about it, she does sit on the floor when its just me at lunchtime so maybe she KNOWS what she should be doing!) - however, with her being so good and lying still (until she gets the ok from OH to dive in for plate licking) I find it hard to push her off.  Its amazing that a dog so food orientated can show so much self control actually!

Anyway, I shall now go and hang my head in shame at our outrageous dinnertime set up that I've just freely admitted!

I suppose, jackyjat , it depends how many rooms you've got!
Seriously though, locking a dog in the other room does not solve the begging / stealing issue, just avoids it. If you don't teach a dog to have food manners you are at risk of the dog doing naughty stuff, like stealing kids ice-creams in the street!
I think its best to just totally ignore the dog at the table, they seem to soon get the message. Unfortunately if the dog is being "rewarded" by being able to steal titbits from the  dads plate, then it is unlikely to stop. It may be useful to tie the dog by its lead to say a radiator pipe to allow you to expose it to seeing you eat, but preventing him from stealing. It is likely he will learn to accept it and settle. 

Mines the same, then, when he doesn't want to be watched, he throws a wobbler and won't understand that each time he feeds her he's rewarding her and making that 'extinction burst' even harder to eliminate.  I occasionally will give them a titbit from the dirty plates - but they have to be in their beds when they get it - and guess where they almost hurl themselves as soon as I start to clear away????.........

Hi Yvonne, The answer is to just give your Husband what HE needs and no more, He would soon relise that if he feed's the dog at the table he goe's with out.

Lol @ Digger

Vivian - that's exactly what I was going to say!

we just don't give food at meal times never off a plate.if he hangs round the table we ignore him or tell him away.they do learn who will give and who won't.beside which it isn't good for them,as much as i love dogs i don't want him to sit looking at my plate.the size of my boy he can put his head on the table next to the plate if he tried.not funny when you have a leo looking at your chop. :-)
we have done this with all the dogs we have had and it works,in time they don't botter even looking.
all goodies are in his bowl the only thing i do give him some times is a bit of gravy on his food.
why is it always men that share their food with the dog? my dad does this with every thing he has,bit for me bit for you :-)  mum hates it but the dog only goes to him.

When I was a kid, I hated vegetables, as lots of kids do. My parents really insisted that we eat our veggies.  Our two dogs were allowed to roam around under the table or whatever. They'd come an put their chin on my lap. I'd "cough" into my hand and non challantly (sp) (or so I thought) put my hand back on my lap. LOL. Gee wiz...do you think my parents were wise to me? The dogs sure were.

Carrie

:-D

This has been the problem with my gang.  he kids 9Only youngest now) will give them anything they don't want so of course it is a cue to fan out around the table.  Now my oldest at 16 hates itso she tells them to go away so they move away do a circle and lie down just out of her reach.

Main problem is them forgetting to clear plates, or leaving food unattended and the dogs thenself rewarding which perpetuates the behaviour.

the one I have most trouble with is the returnee who came back as an adolescent when she was bad mannered enough to literally eat off your plate while you were eating.  It didn't occur to her not to as when she was in ehr previous home I suspect she was put in her crate,a dn the rest of the time with 3 tyoungsters around problablypinched a fair bit of their food or got given it.

My others won't touch the food unless you leave the room for more than a minute or so.  If you say now leave it, they know you are watching and don't touch it while you get a drink or what have you.

When I had puppies one Novemeber and thery were being viewed around Christmas, I had doen a lot of baking and had cut cake for the visitors.  Of course I then saw them out and came back in to find all the cake eaten!!!

Dogs are natural opportunist feeders and it requires a disciplined approach re never allowing them to find stealing rewarding.  In most homes it is next to impossible to ensure that they don;t get food sometimes by stealing, so the easiest and least problematic method is to never leave fod unatteneded, and shut the dog in another room at meal times if they are taking advantage of a person who can't stop them taking the food (such as Dad in this instance or a baby/toddler).

Tried that - he's so soppy he brings bit of cheese/biscuits for them to have if there's not enough dinner to go round - funny thing is when he's not here the dogs don't even come up to the table and NEVER pester me for food. I guess it's because it's mostly me who's with them/trains them/excercises etc and he doesn't get to interact with them as much  as he would like like so when he's around he wants to spoil them !.

Yvonne

My two oldest ones have stayed at my Dads who says he isn't a dog lover :D  The eldest would sit under the kitchen table with her head on his knee.  Now Dad wife won't stand for begging,a nd her kids don't even notice the dog ehen they are eating and wouldn't givbe them anything if they did, so she doesn't so it with them :D

My old Lab, the only trustworthy one in my motley crew, won't take brie, gouda or any other fine cheese and crackers off the coffee table if it's left there unattended. We had a party and everyone moved from the living room into the kitchen and good 'ole Bonnie was in the livingroom still and never got into those delicacies. I never specifically trained her this way. I guess she just knew that would displease us. What a good girl she is. And my dogs do know what human food is as they get handouts regularily, just not from the table.

Carrie

to those of you with more than one dog, what reaction would there be if a dog was to be bad mannered enough to try to stick his head in someone elses bowl?  I'm guessing most dogs would warn them off fairly strongly if the first warning was ignored ;)  perhaps we should be looking at the ways they 'talk' to each other.  Worked with my cats ;)

Yup...that works for me. "G-r-r-r-r-r"

Carrie

Good idea Dill!!
A

Just make sure you're giving the correct first warning..............  A Bonio for whoever can post what it would be ;)

My oldest boy would never take anything from the table - however my young bitch is a complete thief and would take anything if allowed. My dogs never get anything from the table - and they get tit bits as reward for appropriate behaviour.  Even thought the dogs are usually in the kitchen when we eat, we ignore them and they usually sleep knowing their begging efforts would not be reap any rewards.

I have a rule in my house with the kids. The kitchen is the only place they eat meals, I don't allow them to eat meals in the lounge etc,  and this cuts out the whole scenario of the kids leaving food on plates in accessable places for the dogs to find.

We managed to train our highly food driven hound by sheer accident! Unfortunatley, the kitchen, living room, dinning area and conservatory are all open plan so when she saw this disgustingly huge plate, piled so high that she could spot it from 20 yards (my husbands plate of course....not mine :D )....we started to turn her bed around (which is always by our feet) so she was facing the opposite direction. The idea behind this was that we thought it was cruel for her to be drooling so much at every mouthful we/he consumed...within a few weeks...she caught onto this...and has always since, voluntarily sat on her bed, facing the other direction...and when the mealtime is over, she will get called into the kitchen - when we take the plates to the dishwasher, and give her a piece of carot, cauliflower or pasta shell for example - by way of treating her good behaviour. If we are eating something that she can't consume....then she doesn't get called, remains seated, and is rewarded with one of her favourite toys...Voila !....and who said Bassets are hard to train ?!!! LOL....I won't tell you about her other traits :rolleyes:  :D

Jo,

She sounds wonderful. How cute is that....how she figured it out. What a doll.

Carrie

I have 2 bichons that beg from my husband, its my hubby that needs training not the dogs. its funny how they know who to beg from, I have been advised to fill their kongs with naturediet & freeze them & when we are eating give them to Molly & Fudge in their bed, going to try this & hope it works. Pauline

My girls sit and wait and know that they don't get anything until the end when they will each get a bite.  What we did to keep them away was use a water spray bottle (which won't work for many breeds) and if they didn't back up when they got too close they got sprayed.  They now will all sit nicely and wait.  If they do scooch too close I just say back and they scooch back (it was actually great training for teaching them the concept of 'back up').  The water bottle would sit on the table between them and the food and often all we had to do was reach in the direction and they would back up.  We've not used it for ages, however have a new pup now and training is starting again.  It's amazing how far back the other two will sit when they know the pup might get sprayed.  They don't want to accidentally be in the firing line.

We do give them bits at the end to reward them waiting.  Just occasionally their view of the last bite become very different from our view LOL

Wendy

To be honest, as soon as one of the dogs came scrounging round the table it was shut in the kitchen. The dogs never ever get titbits while we're eating, but when we've finished and we take the plates out to the kitchen they lead the way because they know that's where they get any scraps. And never ever off the plates - if it isn't given to them from fingers (soup is a challenge!) it goes in their bowls.

Now they just settle down and wait patiently. The important thing is to be absolutely consistent.
:)

Thank you for all your advise :) I appreciate it all and am in the process of teaching him :D The reason we want to train him at the dinner table is because the little buggeroo can open doors so we cant leave him inside and we dont want to leave him in the garden when it starts getting cold in the winter ;)   
At the moment Im making him lie on his rug and not giving him any attention or reaction whilst we are eating and if he gets up to sniff around the table, whilst we are eating, hes straight outside. And if he is good and lies there and stays away from the dinner table he gets a treat in his bowl. Thing is he hardly ever stays lying down so I may try another method.
Anyway thank you all!!! You've all helped me so much!:D