Hey lovely people, What do you guys do in regards to dinner time? We eat as a family, 3 kids at the table, myself and hubby on the sofa. I really don't like Loki sitting under our legs (fave place to sit) when we eat. Plus he's doing this thing where he keeps trying to jump into the sofa which we're not allowing. So almost knocks our plates off our laps. For those (if anyone) feels the same way, do you crate with a kong or something while you eat? Xx
My dog just takes himself out into the other room, taught himself that! I would put a bed away from you and teach him to settle on that bed, so that once you start to eat, he knows that is where he is supposed to go and lie down. Will take time but feasible. Going on to that bed means a treat.
We used to pop Stanley in his crate Now we make him just sit in his bed while we eat. Sometimes though.. I just can’t resist the face
I used to pop them in the crate when they were babies. It's the easiest thing to do and instills the habit of not being near you during meal time. Now, I have to admit, we let Luna up on the sofa between us while we eat, but she just lays down and goes to sleep, no pestering.
We sit on the sofas to eat most of the time. Harley’s bed is by my sofa so we taught her to lie on her bed whilst we eat. She eats her evening meal at the same time as us, then lies on her bed until we finish and release her. It took about a week to train, but so worth it. She also defaults to a mat when at my mums or in a cafe / restaurant which is really good.
Until Xena was 13 weeks she was in the kitchen while we ate (open plan house), but from 13 weeks she had the roam of the living areas. We eat on the sofa cos we're monsters, and it took a lot of patience and strategic plate placement, but she eventually learnt to just leave us alone while we ate. We had the initial struggle (our fault of course) for letting Xena jump on the sofa while we ate, but I was determined that she learn to leave us the eff alone during meals. She wasn't an itty bitty pup in this photo (edit, the forum calendar in the background tells me it was Jan so she would have been 9/10 months), but she was under a year old: Now she doesn't sit with us at all while we eat - I've got no idea how or when that happened, but it's been ages. She'll sit in front of us and stare intently (we joke that she's watching Food TV) but she won't join us on the the sofa during meals.
Well, not quite a sofa, but a huge cuddle chair and just as large foot stall.........brought it just for me and Harley
We sometimes keep back a portion of Caspar's evening meal and top it up with a bit of cream cheese (freeze if I remember in time) and give him that while we eat. Other times we let him wander around, he usually settles himself. We do eat at a table, though, and I am sure he would want to check things out if we ate on the sofa.
