Dinnertime

I can’t believe we have done this, but we have. None of our other dogs have ever been spoiled in this way. When you teach a dog Down, with a treat in your hand, you signal to the ground to encourage the dog to lie down to get the treat. The next step is to teach the dog to Stay in the Down position by using treats to reward for a good Down/Stay. I think our fancy dog training school pushed that reward more than any of our other schools. Eventually, you put the dog on a Down/Stay, walk a few feet away and remind them when needed,“Stay,” and walking back up to them periodically to reward them saying, “Good Stay.”

Naturally, dinnertime is a good opportunity to work on this lesson. So we put Guinness on a Down/Stay beside the table and continually rewarded him for staying there. We are now at the point, after doing this for a whole year, that we have to treat him throughout our dinner while we eat to keep him on a Down/Stay. Initially, I didn’t want to waste store-bought treats on this, so I gave him ice cubes. That worked great, until one day we decided to treat him to some carrot sticks. He loves carrot sticks! Now he won’t take an ice cube at all. We never give him food from the table. That is a definite no-no. He might have a scrap as I am cleaning off the dishes at the sink, but never food from the table. At least, we have that much smarts!

Grant is away for a few days, so I was on my own for dinner tonight. Since I had been snacking, I was not hungry at dinnertime (usually around 6 PM). At 7:00, Guinness let me know that it was dinnertime and that he was not going to wait any longer for his carrots.