We treat our dogs, and give them table scraps after dinner. Usually, we have to train a pup to take a treat gently, but Skid was different. Tentative at first, he was cautious about approaching the tasty tidbit we held out to him.
All ground-based pack members must wait patiently until the upright pack member is done with the broiler pan. Here, Skid (top), Sunny, and visiting Bramble demonstrate the appropriate distance.
In the beginning, we had to drop the treat onto the floor and move away from it before he would take it. We slowly taught him that it really was all right to take food from our hands; he was very careful not to touch our fingers with his mouth.
He liked hotdogs and hamburgers, luncheon meat and beef and steak and chicken and rabbit and deer — anything with a certain level of kinship to slab o' muscle.
At the end of our first visit to our regular vet — a no-pain checkup — the technician offered Skid a treat. He sniffed it carefully, first with one nostril then the other, then he politely looked into the woman's eyes and slowly wagged his tail.
"Sometimes he's shy about taking treats," I said, although he wasn't acting as though that were the problem; his ears were perky and his gaze bright and straight forward.
The tech put the morsel on the table in front of him. Skid carefully sniffed it again then looked sweetly into her face, pointedly ignoring the offering.
"That's funny," I said.
Then I remembered his dinner bowl from the previous night, the well-licked green beans, all that was left from his share of our table scraps, scattered across the bottom. Sunny had claimed them immediately.
"Dinner scraps" include the crusty stuff at the bottom of the broiler pan.
Sharing is important in a multi-dog house. It took all of us, especially Sunny and Coco, to teach Skid how to share without agression. He learned but we never trusted him and kept close. He happily shared with two or three of his favorite visiting dog friends; we stopped asking him to do that as he got older.
"He won't eat vegetables," I told her. She laughed.
"That explains it," she said. "These are new vegan treats we're trying out."
"It looks like one thumbs-down vote here!"
"Hold on. I think we've got meaty treats up front."
They did, and Skid appreciated it. >>
