Ever wonder why your dog doesn’t eat? Not the physical reasons when her stomach starts talking in squeaks and squelches and squirty noises, but the psychological “I’m choosing not to eat right now” reasons. I can give you some insight into my pathology and perhaps you can apply it to your pup.
When I was a puppy, A-Dog and Shoes-on-the-Floor took my training very seriously. They read oodles of books about what to teach me and which doggy behaviors to hone. One of these behaviors was the danger of food aggression.
With a stubborn breed like mine, food aggression can develop when the humans are careless about feeding time. Training was pretty straight-forward: food in bowl, make me wait, I drool, they say OK, I eat. As with any training, we did this over and over again until there was no training anymore, it just was.
I’m not sure if that plays into my psychosis of leaving a full bowl of food just sitting there, but here’s my criteria for when it’s okay to eat:
::A-Dog and/or Shoes have to be home
::They need to be seated
::No chaos ensuing
(kids running outside, packing for outings, screaming/yelling)
::A calm, quiet atmosphere with only the sounds of two human hearts and the hum of the TV
Not so much to ask for, right? It does get a bit tough when I go to “Scout School,” better known as the kennel. I go twice a year for about a week each and I always slim down significantly. I do eat, but it’s with a sad and bitter edge, because I think that this time they will forget to come get me. You can pity my poor dog brain for that thought, but it is what all canines think when you leave us.
It’s quiet now, so I think I’ll belly up before someone starts yelling for a band-aid.
That happens a lot around here…
Does a dog have any self control? That’s a good question and I’m not sure if I know the answer.
Let’s examine food in relation to self control. I’m pretty well-behaved, so they tell me. I’ve seen other dogs constantly scrounging for food and I don’t do that. I would if I could, but the scrounger has been trained out of me by my family. Another training technique they used was making me wait for my meals. Oh, the sweet torture! Shoes on the Floor would give me the command to sit, put food in my bowl and make me wait about fifteen excruciating seconds (full of drool, need and want) before saying the magic word, “Okay.”
:: busted ::
