Table Manners

Jam is something of a glutton. If he could, he would eat all day like Augustus Gloop of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.



Of course, we don't allow unlimited eating. He gets fed three times a day. You can imagine that his internal food clock is very accurate, but a bit fast. At around 4 am, he will start to cry (he gets fed between 5:30 and 6 am). At 11 am if he is downstairs he will go to the end of the tie-down and stair at the magic door, convinced that sheer will can make it give up the kibble. And at 4 pm, again, the magic door stare down.

We usually move him to some other place in the house and try to distract him from his internal food clock. But you can see it in his eyes that he knows what we are doing. Soon, the magic door will open and kibble will be given out.

That is why we are working hard on table manners. Right now, we are just doing a sit-stay. It used to be that when we brought out his bowl with kibble, he used to go into fits. Now we can get him to sit and calm down. We've now progressed to making him sit until we actually put the bowl on the ground and say "Take a Break!"

With a puppy, we kind of do this at the same time as Jam is doing pretty good just to sit patiently. It took him a couple of days to even do this. Getting him to understand the concept of sitting before food was a chore. That boy wanted to EAT!

But is he now a very polite little sitter. I'm proud of him. When he is older, we will progress to a down stay and then leave the food bowls down and walk out of the room and come back and do a release. That day is a long way off.

Until then, please enjoy watching this one hungry pup vibrate with happiness at the sight of his kibble.