With Cookie being under orders for strict rest, her range of things to do has shrunk substantially. I do try my best to come up with games to play and last couple days she got to go out on short, low-key, mouse hunts, but in general what she should be doing for most of the day is to rest and relax.
When she showed interest in hubby's soda crackers while he was having lunch, we figured it would give her something to do so he shared some. She thought that mooching crackers off him was great fun. It gave her something to do alright. Now she shows up every time there is any food on the table. Oops.
All that it takes to ruin a perfectly good dog is to reward something you don't really want them to do.
Worked once, ought to work again, right? So now we have a dog begging at the table. Of course, given the circumstance we don't really have the heart to be strict about this stuff even though we know that each time we give in will make it that much harder to un-teach this new habit.
It IS kind of funny and cute and it does give her something to do ...
Every time we resolve it's the last time.
We do need to put a stop to this. At some point. Maybe tomorrow. Either way it will take some serious willpower to ignore her efforts.
To a dog, "just this once" doesn't mean anything.
All Cookie knows is that she batted her eyelashes and got a cracker while daddy was having lunch. Worked once, ought to work again, right? And so far it has.
Fortunately, it's not a major deal to us. But it illustrates how little it takes to teach a dog a bad habit.
The upside is, that teaching your dog things you do want them to do isn't really all that much harder.
It's all about well-timed, attractive enough reward. The goal, of course, is to teach our dogs more of the things we like and less of those we don't like. Most of the time, if your dog is doing something you object to, chances are you inadvertently taught them to do that at one point or another.
Instead of being mad at your dog, try to figure out what have you been doing to encourage that behavior.
It might not always be as obvious but trust me, it's there.
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