The G-Dawg Training Guide – Food on the Floor… or Paws (by: Gerrit)

Even though Carlo is now home and I’ve been having TONS of fun playing with him, my puppy raiser still makes sure I train every single day. One of the things I’ve been learning lately is that I should never eat food from the floor... or even from my paws!

You all know how much I LOVE food... so, I'm amazing myself that I’m starting to learn this! My puppy raiser said that the reason it is important for pups in training to not eat food off the floor is because we are allowed to go into restaurants… and people don’t want to see dogs in restaurants snarfing food off the ground and drooling all over the place. Dogs in restaurants are just supposed to lay quietly under restaurant tables and completely ignore the fact that food may be dropped on the floor right next to us! Wow! It sure ain’t easy being an assistance dog!

When my puppy raiser told me all this, I thought I would NEVER be able to learn this. But, here’s what she did. She dropped a dog treat on the floor next to me, told me “no” when I went to snarf it... and then immediately handed me another dog treat. As soon as I sorta understood what she expected from me, she waited longer and longer before giving me my treat reward. I very soon learned that I didn’t need to snarf the food on the floor… my puppy raiser would reward me with dog treats for being a good boy and leaving the food that had dropped!

Not only that… but, I learned that if I was super good, I would get rewarded with a jackpot!!! If I didn’t make any attempts to eat any of the dog treats she dropped around me and on my paws... and if I looked right at her, she would scoop up all of the treats she had dropped and give it to me. JACKPOT!!! The photo above was taken right before I got a Jackpot!

So far, this is my favorite training exercise ever!!! I love not eating food off the floor! Although… if my puppy raiser isn’t looking... I gotta admit, I still try to sneak a snarf here and there. It’s too bad she’s got such good purfury vision [side note by puppy raiser: That’s peripheral vision... and we are going to need to work more on this lesson Gerrit!]. That’s ok with me! Hee hee! ;-)