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Health & Fitness

Training a dog? Put each calorie to work!

Professional dog trainer writes about the best way to feed dogs. Forget the bowl: feed during training exercises and via food puzzles instead.

When I visit a new dog training client in their home, one of the first questions the client answers is "how do you feed your dog?"

Often this is met with surprise, because to most people it is obvious how a dog should be fed. Fill a dog bowl with food and place it on the floor. Done.

What dog trainers know and what their clients find out is that this traditional method of feeding dogs is actually detrimental to all but a few dog training projects.

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Eating quickly from a bowl, without any human interaction, transmits very little desirable information to a dog. At worst, a dog may perceive the food (and even the empty bowl) as "his," so he may begin to guard it from family members. It is very natural for dogs to guard food but it is not a pleasant or safe behavior to live with!

Bowl feeding provides little, if any, mental or physical challenge for a dog. Put head in bowl, take food in mouth, chew (maybe), swallow, repeat. Lick bowl. Done.

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Advantages of hand feeding include:

  • Opportunity to practice trained (and new) behaviors each day
  • Dog learns to take food gently from people's hands
  • Dog learns that hands near its face predicts good things
  • Food can't be guarded - only a piece or mouthful at a time is presented. Guarding habit does not have opportunity to develop.
  • Dog learns that interacting with people and cooperating with them leads to breakfast!

 

So what are the best ways to feed a well-trained dog?

When you have time:

Hand feed your dog her meal via training exercises. The exercise can be as simple as teaching or practicing a "Sit" or a "Down." The object is to trade desired behaviors for food.

One of the most enjoyable ways to train a dog while feeding him his breakfast is on a training walk. You can feed your dog when he is walking where you'd like him to be, on a loose leash, or you can stop every few steps and request an already-trained behavior. Your hungry dog will pay attention to you (especially if you include some special treats fed at random intervals) and enjoy this lesson-and-walk combo.

If you are not sure how to do this or you have never done any training with your dog, it's never too late to start as long as your dog is healthy! You can find well educated dog trainers on professional association referral lists: APDT and CCPDT.

When you are too busy to train your dog:

Dogs can entertain themselves at mealtime by extracting their food from a variety of puzzle toys. These range from the classic Kong toy to the newer brain teaser style puzzles by Nina Ottoson. Pet Pantry Warehouse and Choice Pet in Greenwich stock a variety of food puzzle toys for you to choose from. Do read the instructions for each toy - some are designed for use when a dog is home alone but others are intended for supervised use.

Dogs fed from bowls receive nutrition but very little, if any, educational information. And sometimes they get the wrong message, creating a food guarding problem down the road. More productive (and humane) alternatives to train and entertain your dog is to use your dog's daily meals as training times. When you are too busy, feed your dog via puzzles rather than a boring bowl!

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