Feeding Time
Advice from Animal Expert Dr. Grey Stafford
 Now that we have two dogs in our home again, I am reminded of how important feeding time is. Not just in the nutritional sense but in the training sense, too. A lot can be learned in the few minutes prior, during and after the bowls of food are laid down. It is important that we make certain the behaviors our pets pick up at meal time foster better cooperation all throughout the day and night, not just when the dinner bell rings.
Some variety rules!
I don’t give my pets a lot of edible treats and almost never any people food (maybe just a sliver of cheese now and then). The reason is I find animals, particularly puppies and kitties, do better on a stable diet given at regular intervals. Adding in a rich food item, even one made for pets, at random can upset their fragile gut balance leading to vomiting and/or diarrhea. Instead, try holding back a small amount of their regular dry diet for use in training sessions throughout the day.
Where I do like to introduce variety is in where my pets eat. In our house we have three common locations where meals take place: the kitchen, the dog crate, and the outside dog kennel/yard. The kitchen is where the water bowl is located. The crate is where each pup spends a variable amount of time each day. So feeding inside helps to keep it interesting for them. And the kennel is where the two animals have the most time together; it is also where they tend to receive less supervision from me.
When the puppy first arrived 3 weeks ago, she needed help building her confidence and independence. (nobody wants a 100 pound clinging, whiner 24 hours a day!). Plus, she and my year old dog were getting along fine, so we used mealtime to reward her for being alone in the kennel or inside her crate. The same logic applied to the 1 year old. He was so curious about the new arrival that we used mealtime to reinforce him for being outside alone, while we spent a little time with the pup.
Three weeks later, the new pup can now spend time alone inside the crate or the kennel. So much so, that now we are shifting bowl locations so that each dog eats by its companion. This is the ultimate goal going forward. We want these dogs to be best friends for life—not competitors looking to steal each other’s food. The last thing we want to teach them going forward is that they ONLY get fed for being alone. Doing that would create the potential for aggression whenever one animal got too close to the other’s food, bowl, crate or “space.” It might even spill over to other forms of reinforcement such as fighting over toys or even sitting near my wife and me!
Instead, by rotating where and how animals are fed (sometimes alone, sometimes together, switching crates etc.), we can teach them to focus on proper eating habits including cooperation in the presence of others. At the same time, they can be learning to ignore the environment around them. This helps to prevent fostering conditions that lead to territoriality in adult animals (and hence aggression) over common and highly reinforcing spaces like the kitchen, the crate, a kennel, or by my side.
Dr. Grey
Learn more about Dr. Grey Stafford
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