Is dog begging a natural behavior?
My room mates have two wonderful dogs. As good dog owner they have trained both dogs very well and have never once (according to them) given them tables scraps. Today I was munching on a piece of bread and one of the dogs came up to me, sat down and gave me those big begging eyes!
My room mate immediately got upset and yelled at the dog because he believes it is not a natural behavior. I on the other hand think it might be. Most dogs I have ever known or encountered, to the very least, beg. Is my room mate right about this or not?
By the way, I thought I should note they trained their dogs using a 'treat' method.
Comments
My beagle has been trained using a food reward based system and as soon as he sees I've got food (one of his treats or something I'm eating) he will sit down and stare at me as if to say "look at me I'm sitting, just like you taught me to, aren't I the best little puppy in the world? Come on, you know I deserve a treat now... gimme gimme gimme!!!".
I've used a lot of affection based reward training with my lab as I noticed he responds to it a bit better. And, whenever he wants a pat fix, he'll come up to me, sit down and stare up at me, again as if to say "look at me I'm sitting, please please please can I have a pat, I need a pat, gimme a pat!"
So I reckon, your friends dog was trying to get your attention by "sitting" in an effort to get a reward. there is probably an element of natural behaviour in it, but not too much.
It is natural behavior trained or not. Training is to keep the dog from actually taking the food off your plate or out of your hand. No matter how much you train a dog though, it will always sit and at least watch you eat unless it has something else to occupy its time with.
Easy, don't allow the dog in the kitchen during meal time. You can try a baby gate across the door of the kitchen; placing the dog in a crate or another room; or give the dog a down stay command or place command for him to lay on his bed during meals. What ever you do do not feed the dog from the table and do not allow the dog to clean the floor of scraps after the meal. This just causes more begging.
I think it is natural for a dog to want what we are eating that's why you have to train them not to do that it can be annoying
I don't know, but the dog should be ignored, not chewed out, by it's owner when it does that. Tell your roomie to just ignore it and the dog will stop.
i think it is more of a learned behavior
my dog is a resuced greyhound and was never around kitchen food untill we brought her home and she wont even look twice at it while we are eating
now if i offer her some thats a different story lol