The Feeding Routine..

One of the most common misconceptions in the dog training world is in the feeding routine. This is also an area where humans can get bit if the dog develops dominant behavior associated with the routine. What makes your feeding routine good or bad? Is your feeding routine making the dog think you’re the pack leader or the pack follower? Let’s discuss.

The first step of this comes down to one question…how long do you give your dog to eat? Is your dog able to eat whenever it wants? Is the food bowl always full and available? If it is, then your food routine is more like an all you can eat buffet, open 24 hours a day for the dog (aka the free/open feed routine). From a leadership standpoint it gives the dog full power over a vital asset that’s needed to live. From a health standpoint it gives the dog the ability to eat much more than it should which leads to all sorts of health problems. It can also make it nearly impossible to house train a dog.

Imagine a human having a bank account that is always full of money…now imagine that food is money in the dog’s world. Hold a piece of chicken in one hand and a one-hundred-dollar bill in the other hand…which one is the dog going to be interested in?

Will a free/open feed routine make the dog think it’s the house guest or the homeowner?

Step one will always be setting time limits on the feeding routine.

Now that you have established time limits let’s discuss the next step…HOW to feed the dog. Hundreds of so-called trainers use how to feed your dog videos to show how good their skills are…why is that? Let’s discuss this, hold a massive bonus check in front of any human and tell them that if they just finish a few minor tasks that day you will hand it to them. You will see that human immediately become the most obedient person on earth. Now imagine that bonus check is food to the dog…see how that works?

The best part of these training videos is the fact that the trainer doesn’t show what happens as soon as they put the food down. The dog will charge the bowl and once they get just a morsel in their mouth that same dog will make sure the human isn’t getting any back. The food might even be shown in a slow feeder bowl! Is that obedience? Is that a dog who respects that human as the pack leader? Is that a dog that will eat calmly and not like it’s going to the doggy electric chair later that day?

Some of these trainers will even claim they don’t use treats to train and then use a massive bowl of food to reward the dog for sitting before eating! Cringeworthy to say the least!

So how do you feed the dog? After the proper time limit has been established you should then focus on having the dog in a calm, submissive state, before, during and after the feeding. No commands are required, no sitting is required. You get the food prepared, put it wherever you see fit as the pack leader, set the bowl down and walk away. The dog should wait and respect your space before it approaches the food. If you walk back into the space where the dog is eating, the dog should either walk away from the food and give you back the food bowl or continue eating at the same pace it was before you came back into the space…if they eat faster just because you are now in their space, this is a big indicator that you are not the pack leader in this situation.

Do you hunger on the proper way to feed your dog? Contact your local Always Faithful Dog Trainer today and get real training, real results!