One of the enjoyable tidbits I picked up from watching the Train Your Dog DVD: The Positive, Gentle Method by Nicole Wilde and Laura Bourhenne was the notion of feeding my dogs a little differently. Instead of always just having the food in the same bowl in the same place, they mentioned that dogs enjoy a little variety, some mental stimulation.

Well, I know I like to eat in different places, but it hadn’t crossed my mind regarding my dogs. And of course, it isn’t exactly the same as it is for us. I like to look out at the view from our sunroom, and I have yet to see a dog doing that!

My dogs are already trained to sit while I put their food bowls down and to stay until I say “Okay!” I wondered if that would transfer over completely to this approach of spreading their kibble out along the floor.

It worked fine. I do already feed my dogs in separate rooms, so there was no competitive aspect.

When I spread the kibble out on the sunroom floor near her, Lola thought about going for it immediately, but a glance at me showed her that was not okay, so she waited. With some interest, of course, specially while I turned on my camera and took a few shots.

But both our dogs seem to enjoy eating this way. I often feed both a good quality kibble and some homemade food, and I don’t anticipate spreading raw hamburger around!

Nor did the DVD recommend it. The program is really concerned with more essential training elements and does a topnotch job of teaching them — here is my review of the Train Your Dog DVD. The link at the top of the page takes you right to the DVD’s page at Dogwise, where you can watch a selection of the program. It is an upbeat and informative introduction to positive dog training, covering things like come, sit, stay, down, plus a section on such puppy training topics as housetraining, crate training, and so forth.

Dinner at Last

In the second picture, Lola is finally enjoying the fruits of her patience.

One thing that interested me was that the first time I fed her this way, Lola missed a few of the bits of kibble that rolled onto the part of the floor you can see is made of little inset stones rather than of tiles. Since a dog’s nose is said to be a much more important part of their sensory equipment than their eyes, this surprised me.