Stop Begging (Part 1)

Sunday afternoon and your new wife’s parents are coming to dinner. You have noticed a bit of resentment from her side of the family but this dinner is going to show them that you are indeed capable of controlling your own household. The house is perfect, the table is beautiful and the food smells and looks delicious. Unfortunately, your Cocker Spaniel thinks so too and is sitting up and begging for morsels off everyone’s plate and, if not rewarded, attempting to take the food on his own. You may be king of your castle but this dog’s behavior is making you look like the court jester. How could this have been avoided?

Sadly, this is not all the dogs fault and it started a very long time ago. Some horribly misguided individual who was trying to be a good pet owner did this while the pup was still very young and trained the dog for this very behavior. Want to know who taught your dog this trick? It’s a secret so listen carefully… It was YOU.

Now before you get upset and quit reading, take a moment to realize that you weren’t consciously training your pet for this unwanted behavior and you did it with the best of intentions. No one is blaming you but the behavior is here now and must be dealt with. Knowing how to fix the problem is easiest when knowing from whence it came and by now I am sure you are starting to figure that out. Your dog learned this trick from all those times when, however well meaning you were, the little scraps of food were tossed down to a cute little pup who stared up with sad brown eyes and left you overpowered with guilt as you looked at his dish of dog kibble and your plate with steak and potatoes. Those moments when your kind-hearted generosity over stepped its boundaries and created the begging monster that we find flipping your mother in laws chair over today for a bite of beef tip. All of this could have been prevented by a simple act of will power then but now you have a problem to deal with.

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