We give our dogs a dental bone a few times a week. If our 7 mo old puppy gets done first he will go over to our other dog and if he has any on the floor as he's eating the puppy will snatch it. Should we keep him from taking it or should we allow the other dog to let him know? Our other dog is not food aggressive and from what we seen he will just kind of let out a lttle grumble and turn away but the puppy still gets whats on the floor.
Hi @mom2labs in a muliple dog family the rule is that a dog should leave the area as soon as he has finished the portion allocated to that dog. You dont want to allow the faster eater to bully the other dog. You need to avoid any potential resource guarding issues. I would use a house line and do some down stays in another area with the faster eater.
I don't let dogs take food items off each other or bug each other whilst eating anything. I would intervene before this could happen and shut them away separately to enjoy their food or chew. If you do this from the start, they won't even attempt to bug each other because they never get reinforced (never get the food from the other dog). If you allow them to nick food from the other dog, they are being strongly reinforced for that behaviour by getting that food.
