If you have the experience of keeping a puppy or even just the company of one, you will notice that many dog owners do not curb their dog’s habit of begging for food. In fact, some dog owners believe that it is a cute behaviour! This is absolutely untrue and if you do not train your puppy from young, it will form the bad habit of begging for food. So, why you should never let your puppy beg for food then?
Begging is a bad habit because it is a form of demand from your puppy and is actually another aspect of the animal world’s ‘pack control’. In fact, your puppy can even become hostile if it gets out of hand later. Imagine if you have developed a habit of giving it food each time it starts to whine or sits there staring at you with teary-eyes when you are eating. However, over time your puppy grows to become a huge dog and if you decide to change your behaviour and not give it the food you were eating, the whining and begging can turn into hostile barking, jumping on the table to attack your food or worse, biting a bit of your finger off in the process! As such, this should be one of the first behaviours to curb when you are training a puppy.
Apart from aggression, constant whining and refusal to leave the kitchen area are other behavioural problems you might see developing in your puppy. Imagine having guests over for dinner and there is your puppy begging constantly for food from them! Your guests might not be able to appreciate your puppy’s annoying whining and that’s another reason why you should never let your puppy beg for food.
Besides behavioural issues, your puppy’s health should also be taken into considerations. When you give your puppy table scrapes, it is taking in the fats and the gravy of your food which can give problems to your puppy such as obesity and indigestion. Your chocolate, chicken chunks or beef steak will not be beneficial to your puppy and can even cause death! It needs nutritional food in order to grow into a healthy dog and such nutrition can be found in your puppy’s diet. Even if your table scrapes are only add-ons to its diet, it will not want to eat much of its own food. Thus, you need to keep in mind the reasons why you should never let your puppy beg for food if you want to have a healthy and happy pet.
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Thank you for this interesting and informative article!
I’m on my 3rd puppy now, from a boxer being my first, then a king charles and now a red setter and everything you say here is right. Many people bring up their puppys to fully grown dogs and pamper them to death with no training and end up with problem dogs
If don’t nip the begging problem while your dog is still a puppy you will end up with bigger problems, and a bigger dog to deal with! I never give any animal whether it is a cat or dog food from my plate, or ‘people food’ in general and it has always worked for me. My cat now won’t even touch anything that doesn’t resemble his kibble.
This is great advice for any new dog owner to read. You want your dog to be well trained and to have good manners in social situations. It is also bad to deprive your dog of the food it needs to be healthy.
Some great tips in this article. Should come in handy for the puppy I’m going to surprise my girlfriend with soon.
thanks
This article is great. It’s really important to see your puppy as the dog it will become so that you don’t give in to the ‘cute’ factor! I will pop by your site again soon.