Easy Training with Your Dog's Mealtime - Positive Partners Dog Training, LLC

Did you know that you don’t have to spend hours a day training your dog? In fact, you can get a lot accomplished in very little time! There has also been some preliminary research that shows that shorter training sessions are more effective! When you are planning out your training, think short and sweet!

If you have worked with me, you know I’m a big fan of using your dog’s kibble (dry dog food) as their treats when you can. This helps us ensure they’re still getting a balanced diet, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying a ton of treats. Store-bought treats are still important and have their time and place, don’t get me wrong!

Your dog’s meals are often the biggest ‘reward’ they get all day! You are also likely feeding them twice a day. Why not put all those kibbles to work? You don’t have to make them work for the WHOLE meal, but you can use part of it to knock out your goals.

*If you have a dog who seems very hungry at one or both meal times, please feed them a portion of their meal FIRST. It is very hard to learn effectively when your tummy is empty!*

Coming When Called: 1 minute exercise

This one can be super easy to practice. Almost every dog LOVES to eat! The hardest part here is getting them to not be right under you as you practice. The objective here is to call your dog to you, then give them a big JACKPOT reward by feeding them all or some of their meal! Because they love to eat, they should be really excited when they come to you. Because dogs learn by association they’ll start to associate all that excitement and a big reward with “come”.

Place your dog outside, or have a family member take them in another room. Prepare their food as usual, or divide it into a few smaller portions for training. If someone else is holding your dog, call them to you (with your helper releasing the dog when you do). Feed your dog when the arrive! So easy! If your dog is out in the yard, you can just call them in from outside. If they are waiting at the door, you can try calling them from a side gate or a different door.

Positive Interrupter: 2 minute exercise

This skill is super handy for all dogs to know! The positive interrupter is a way we can stop or prevent problem behaviors as they occur, bring our dogs back to us, and give them more instruction on what they SHOULD do instead.

With a Positive Interrupter, we stop the problem behavior, call our dog to us, and get their attention, all with one simple cue! Once your dog is running back to you from distractions or problem areas, don’t just reward them. Give them a good treat for coming to you, then tell them what to do. Redirect them to an appropriate behavior: resting on their bed, chewing a bully stick, playing with a dog toy (not your shoe!), etc. Don’t forget you have to REPLACE the problem behavior with a correct behavior, or else your dog will probably go right back to what he was doing before!

Just practice 5 repetitions with each meal.

Video Demo: https://youtu.be/HQt7FwbyU-0

No Jumping: 3 to 5 minute exercise

For this one, I do recommend you feed your dog a snack first. We don’t want them starving! I like to have people follow my Jumping Protocol with their dog’s meals the first few times they do it because you will be feeding quite a few treats!

Feed your dog 25% of their meal so they aren’t starving.
Have your dog sit. Step back so that you are about an arm’s length away from them. Holding 1 kibble in your hand, lift your arm straight out in front of you (shoulder height), with the kibble above your dog.
Slowly lower your hand, counting in your head “good dog one, good dog two, good dog three”. If they stay sitting the whole time, give them the treat. You should already be at your dog’s mouth on three.
1. If your dog jumps up, lift the kibble straight up, and move back a bit so they don’t jump ON you. Don’t say anything – wait for them to sit again, then restart
2. If they jump two times in a row, make the next repetition easier by moving faster. We don’t want them to keep failing!
Do this 20 times, then feed your dog the rest of their meal!
After a few days of this, you can progress through the steps! See the handout at the end of this post.
See a demonstration of step 1 here: https://youtu.be/q1o4_2oan4k

Resource Guarding Prevention: 3 minute exercise

We’ve all heard of or known a dog that guards their food bowls. While this is a normal behavior, it’s not one we like to see. This is something that you can easily address or prevent in just a few minutes a day.

If your dog is already showing signs of aggression around meal time, work in person with a certified positive reinforcement dog trainer before attempting to train this on your own!

Divide your dog’s meal into 3 portions. Prepare some REALLY high-value treats; chicken, lunch meat, hot dogs, cheese, etc. Have the treats ready in your hand or treat pouch.
Give your dog the first of the 3 portions and back away.
Approach your dog as they are eating the food, and toss treats into the bowl (or as close as you can get them!). Immediately walk away again.
Repeat until they finish that portion of food.
When they are finished eating, approach them, ask them to sit, and say “are you finished?”. Pick up their bowl, and give them a few of the good treats. You can also toss the treats to the side to get your dog to move away from the bowl.
Repeat steps 3 to 5 until you have fed their whole meal.

The goal of this exercise is to teach your dog that when you approach them and they are eating or have a super cool item, you are not there to steal it – you might be there to bring them something even better! We want them to get excited that you are approaching them, not get worried, eat faster, or get defensive. When done right, your dog will start to look up and be excited about what is coming next!

Video Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOdyP7xbdOg

DO NOT remove their bowls while they are still eating. DO NOT put your hands in the bowl or handle them while they are eating. This will often INCREASE aggression.