We have one dog who eats as soon as food is available and one grazer so we worked really hard with Mojo so he learned that not only should he not eat out of Kaia’s bowl, but that at meal times he sits and waits to be told he can eat.
Last night we all had a very restless night. I blame my husband but the dogs and I suffered interrupted sleep as well so our morning routine was a bit off. I was running late, so instead of being in the kitchen eating when Mojo was I put his food down, told him he could eat and then raced downstairs to my office for a call. It wasn’t until I went to give them water when I finished work at 5 that I noticed his breakfast was still in his bowl. Poor guy was so hungry but so confused that I had to hand feed him the first mouthful to get him to eat. He licked the bowl clean and then polished off his dinner at 6 without any hesitation.
It’s nice that he’s so obedient but I now feel terribly guilty
Also feeling guilty as I realize how long it’s been since I’ve taken pictures of the dogs, holy crap, years!
Glad you realized it before the poor hound suffered too much! Like you, we have a highly trained dog who knows he should eat his rations asap at dinnertime, and one rescue who just… doesn’t. (His previous owners never fed a proper diet, and the dog is prone to beg from the table, raid the garbage, and steal anything handy from the counter. It’s psychologically hard to put the food away when you know that one dog is hungry, but I don’t know any better way to handle it. (We can’t free-feed due to bloat risk and motion sickness in our working dogs.)
A friend of mine inadvertently taught her dog an “you can eat now” command. She had someone sitting him for a few days and they told her they couldn’t get him to eat. She mentally went through her feeding routine with him and realized they weren’t saying, “Bon Appetit!” after placing the food in front of him. She never meant it as a command, but was so consistent with it that apparently he did!
I did something similar with my dog - trained her to only eat out of her own bowl. Not the bowl belonging to our guest dog, Big Old Dog, who will eat anything and everything; the training was mostly directed at Bif Old Dog. I always put food in my own dog’s bowl, but it took me ages to realise that the only reason she wasn’t cleaning up the leftovers from Big Old Dog’s bowl (who’d been collected at meal time) or from off the floor after Big Old Dog’s attempts to get in the dog food bag was because she was too well-trained.
I set the bowl of food down. Then he sits and waits while I repeat “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, thru Christ our Lord.”
He’s not quite that well trained he will eat food off the floor. In fact, the cutest thing ever is when it’s almost dinner time and Kaia still has food in her bowl she will sometimes take mouthfuls of food, walk away from her bowl and drop them on the floor so Mojo can share in her late breakfast.
We have two cats - one which likes to graze, but has learned to eat the majority of her portion right away, and another which will stuff herself full on whatever food she can get. It took some work, but the second cat has mostly learned to eat from the bowl on one side of the kitchen and to kinda-sorta leave the other bowl alone, even if there’s still food in it.
I say kinda-sorta, because while Cat #2 knows that she can’t just hunker down and start eating out of that bowl, she still wants to get at the food. So she walks over, scoops a piece of food out of the bowl with her paw, chases/carries it down the hallway and eats it somewhere near the living room. Then she trots back over and does it again! If there’s only a couple of bites of food left, we’ll let her get away with it because it’s cute, but if Cat #1 has left a lot behind, we just pick up the bowl and put it on a shelf until Cat #1 returns for round two.
Training cats is hard!
Cat #2 is also talkative - I’m trying to get her to meow at me when I say 'What do you say?" I think she’s figured out that I want her to do something, but isn’t sure about the meowing yet.
I feed one dog upstairs and one downstairs at the same time. Winston loves food. Nordberg eats fine but will not fight Winnie over it. So I give her a headstart. By the time he licks his bowl clean, she has eaten her food.
Is this serious? He really waits until you say “Amen” like SeaDragon Tattoo’s friend’s dog waits for “Bon Appetit!” before he eats?
That’s hilarious. Did you actually have to train him, or did he do it to himself like the aforementioned dog?
ETA: Oh, and our oldest cat has learned that any time he wants food, he should run up to his bowl and point to it with his paw. It’s so cute that you can’t help giving him food.
It’s an offshoot of teaching him to Stay. He learned to stay when I put the food on the floor. Then I would say “Free dog!” and then he could eat. I just started saying “Amen!” in the same tone of voice, and he learned pretty quick that that meant the same thing.
Be warned: once they start talking they DONT EVER STOP!!
Our smallest one talks all the time. I assume my talking right back at her doesn’t hurt, lol, but sometimes she’ll go off and make even newer sounds; it’s like she’s gaining a vocabulary! And now her bigger brother has started doing it, too, but with his own inflections. And no, they’re not Siamese, they just…talk. A lot!
Oh, she already talks all the time. I figure if she’s gonna do it, she might as well do it on demand. Perhaps one day she’ll be satisfied with the conversation with me and shut up the rest of the time.
What? I can hope!
She’s currently on my lap, purring up a storm and once in a while she looks straight at me and says “parrou?” If I stop petting her for a bit then start again, I get a “mip!”
Glad you realized it before the poor hound suffered too much! Like you, we have a highly trained dog who knows he should eat his rations asap at dinnertime, and one rescue who just… doesn’t. (His previous owners never fed a proper diet, and the dog is prone to beg from the table, raid the garbage, and steal anything handy from the counter. It’s psychologically hard to put the food away when you know that one dog is hungry, but I don’t know any better way to handle it. (We can’t free-feed due to bloat risk and motion sickness in our working dogs.)