Preventing food aggression as puppies?

[Briarwood]

I was reading in one of my books (I don't have it in front of me, but I believe it was the How to Raise a Puppy You Can Live With book) that in the wild, mothers make the children work for their food. They do not provide immediate rewards and provide light frustration. So some breeders will do simple things like place a paper plate over the bowl, or make a ramp that they have to crawl up to the eating area, or other ways to make them do some light work to get their food. The theory is that not only does this help develop their thinking skills, it helps avert food aggression as adults because there wasn't always immediate gratification. Has anyone else worked with this? What are the opinions out there on the probability that this goes a long way toward averting adult food aggression?

[imogene]

I have always made Belzie and Sam work for their meals. By this I mean they have always had to sit/stay or down stay for an indeterminate amount of time before they get to eat. Sometimes they wait for 30 seconds, but I have made them wait for up to 3 minutes. It has really helped me positively reinforce the stay command since there is no bigger reward than a heaping bowl of food. They do not have food bowl aggression and even Sam who had exhibited resource guarding with high valued treats, has only growled at us once with respect to his food bowl. This was months ago and he has not showed any sign of an issue since. Your comment is very interesting. I wonder if they get frustrated while waiting for dinner, and if that is why the have been so great at meal time.

[Briarwood]

Imogene - I think you do a wonderful job with your pups and I like how you've handled the situations that have risen at your home. I was just curious if anyone who breeds practices this with the puppies in their early formative months before they left home and if they had noticed a correlation.

Oh - by the way - tell your husband that we gave up and bought a "real" camera so that now I can get this bokeh thing figured out - lol. It's a Nikon D70S and we've been trying to get it all figured out. He had been trying to give me some pointers earlier on photography since we LOVE your pictures soooooo much!

[imogene]

Imogene - I think you do a wonderful job with your pups and I like how you've handled the situations that have risen at your home. I was just curious if anyone who breeds practices this with the puppies in their early formative months before they left home and if they had noticed a correlation.

Oh - by the way - tell your husband that we gave up and bought a "real" camera so that now I can get this bokeh thing figured out - lol. It's a Nikon D70S and we've been trying to get it all figured out. He had been trying to give me some pointers earlier on photography since we LOVE your pictures soooooo much!

:lol: Thanks for the vote of confidence. Belzie and Sam are our first dogs and we have learned a lot in the last 14 months. Probably the most important lesson we have learned is that there is no "one way" to train dogs. Every situation and may call for a different tactic. Sam definitely requires different handling.

It is so good to hear that you have a new camera - now you can start playing. I am actually going to take a class, and learn how to shoot with Mike's camera. Mike just bought me an Olympus 770 SW so I have a new camera to learn too. I fell and broke my nikon :( This new one is shock proof to 5-ft and water proof. I think he was going for the indestructible factor, but it is pretty good for a point and shoot.

Mike's server is down right now so we don't have too many new photos. I really need to submit some new pictures of Sam. If you can believe it he is almost 10 months and almost 25 lb.. :eek: He is still all puppy and very cute:lol:

[slakker]

Oh - by the way - tell your husband that we gave up and bought a "real" camera so that now I can get this bokeh thing figured out - lol. It's a Nikon D70S and we've been trying to get it all figured out. He had been trying to give me some pointers earlier on photography since we LOVE your pictures soooooo much!

Congratulations! You got an awesome camera there and if you need anything or if I can help, let me know...

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but once you go SLR (digital or film), post processing will become more and more important. We use Aperature and Photoshop for that... as Ansel Adams once said, "the image capture is the musical score, but the processed picture is the performance"! I've always liked that saying... though I may have paraphrased somewhat....

[Briarwood]

Tony has been reading a lot about Aperature. But he has to settle for an older version of photoshop and the user-friendly Corel Paint Shop Pro XI for now.

Imogene - I might have to look into your version of the camera for myself. He winces every time I pick his up, even if it's just to hang it on its hook - lol. ... just because people have on occasion called me Calamity Jayne is no reason for him to worry.

These are your first dogs??? Wow... you have done exceptionally well with them and it's obvious you absorb information and are able to use it quite well. If you ever want to babysit any of mine, I'll run 'em up there! lol