Doggy Myth Busters 3 – Eating first

Today another blog in the Mythbusters Dog Behavior series, this time on the subject of ‘Eating first’.

Who eats first at your house, you or the dog?

A rather loaded subject in some households; who eats first. It used to be said that you had to eat your own dinner first, because otherwise ‘your dog is higher in rank than you’.

Think about this. If this were the case, then when you have a visitor before you have been able to feed your dog, will you first serve all your guests a meal before your dog is allowed to eat, because otherwise he would be ‘higher’ than them? Gonna be an expensive thing.

In feral dogs, the dog that killed the prey eats first, because it got there first. It’s that simple. The one who kills the prey, and those who are most hungry at that moment, eat first. Rather efficient, right? A bit impractical if you always have to wait for the ‘alpha’, even if he is not hungry because he has already found something to snack on somewhere else.

So it doesn’t matter at all when you feed your dog, at least in this respect. What does matter, is your own preferences. If you like being able to eat in peace without five hungry Labradors drooling over every bite from a distance (welcome to my world), then it’s quite practical if the dogs eat first.

Resource agression

Elaborating on this, ‘practicing taking away food’ is something that many people think they have to do. The only thing you will encourage with this is what you think you’re trying to avoid: resource aggression. Yep, exactly what you wanted to prevent, you create by practicing. Your dog learns that you are that jerk who always disturbs him when he is eating and takes his food away. A logical consequence is that he will eat even faster, and may even start to show aggression. So just don’t practice this at all. If you always let your dog eat quietly, then you can just take it away in an emergency, and your dog will probably be confused at such a time, but not pissed at you for taking something away again.

So, in summary:

• Do: feed your dog when it suits you, it’s fine if the dogs eat first at your house. They do here too.
• Don’t: practice taking away food. Don’t be a jerk to your dog.