01-20-2009, 10:43 AM
sally Wrote:Ah shit; you free-feed them??? Do you want shit convenient or your dogs well-behaved? One mealtime, sometimes 2, depending on the dog; at the same time every day so the dog has a routine. Free-feeding is baaaaaaaaaaaad.Sinister Wrote:That is something I've been doing wrong. They all eat out of one food bowl. I fill it up with dry food and they eat whenever they want. I do this out of convenience for myself and they don't fight over the one bowl. This is doing nothing to reinforce my role as alpha as you said though. I do make them sit and stay for treats though.SyberBitch Wrote:The first thing you really need to do, is get them all doing some basic obedience. You have to work with them one at a time to start with, but they all need at least a solid 'sit' and 'down' (note: 'sit/stay' and 'down/stay' is redundant because they should not 'break' the command until released from it anyway). I believe you said you already know something about training, so I won't go into details on that right now, but once you have each dog so that it will sit and stay put until you release it, you need to start setting them up with 'distractions', for example, rolling a ball past them while sitting. Be creative with it.No shit; Syber does know her dogs pretty well.
I would add to this that with all dogs; especially intact males, they should be put into a sit/stay before they are fed. They receive permission to eat from the pack leader -you - and they don't eat before the humans eat. You put their food down and release them from the sit/stay before they are allowed to go to the food bowl. This consistently reinforces your role as alpha.