"Puppy Time!!"

Every evening we have a ritual when we feed our critters. First we feed all the cats their wet food in their individual bowls, then we leave the scraps the cats behind in those bowls for our dogs to clean up. I hope this video works - this is my first time attempt doing a video on my phone and uploading it to photobucket. Sorry but it's a bit grainy.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v415/amycich/My dogs/?action=view&current=1007091958-01.flv

The dogs lay quietly throughout the cat feeding time, which takes about 15 minutes. They remain there until I say the magic words: "Puppy Time!!!".

I forgot to give them their release one night and came back an hour later to find them laying quietly in the kitchen, waiting to clean the cat bowls.

They are very good dogs!!!

And btw - the cats are is Spanky, Lucky and Bob in the video. Lucky is the one that meowled.

oh my gosh, you have really good dogs! How did you train them to do that?! That's amazing!

I really enjoyed the video!

WOW! I'm impressed!! You wanna come and train my dogs? Mine have to be crated before we feed the wet cat food or the poor cats wouldn't stand a chance. As it is, we go through twice as much dry cat food as dog food because they dogs keep thinking it's a treat.

You have a beautiful fur-family!!

WOW Those are some incredibly well behaved puppies

Great video Amy, and of course, beautiful fur babies.

Apparently I haven't updated Adobe Flash Player recently - I have to get ver 8.

thats so amazing your dogs are so well behaved! gorgeous furr family you have!

That is absolutely amazing! Ollie won't touch the kitty food (unless I am not looking ), but he does like to investigate the tootsie rools in the litter box so I have a baby gate and the cats have their own dog free room.

Amy, it's so nice to hear your voice! Those are some amazingly well behaved (trained!) doggies! Why am I not surprised!

Love it! I will be getting a pup in the near future and "leave it" is number one priority on my list of commands I plan to teach. I want the cats to continue to live in peace.

Thank you everyone!! Our neighbor's dog likes to come over for "sleep overs" and since she's here during evening meals, we've taught her to do the same (trained her in 2 tries). One time when the neighbor was here, we went thru this ritual and he stared at his dog in utter disbelief and told us that "this isn't my dog". Apparently she'll fight other dogs for her food. I told him that's simply not allowed in my house. Long story why we sort of share a dog.

Then another time we had our vet out to do the annual vaccinations for the cats and we invited her to stay for dinner. We did the feeding ritual and asked her to release them with "Puppy Time". She was awed and amazed that they listen like they do and kept saying she'd never seen dogs do that before.

When I give advice about dog training, I recommend Jan Fennell's techniques. I know there are some people who call her training old fashioned, but look what it's done for me.

And besides, dogs are really sooooooooooooo easy to train when you are 100% consistent with them and they know who is the alpha in the house.

Originally Posted by whiteforest

Love it! I will be getting a pup in the near future and "leave it" is number one priority on my list of commands I plan to teach. I want the cats to continue to live in peace.

Click to expand...

Actually, when we started all of this, we taught them down / stay. When they stood up to move towards the bowls, we put them back into down / stay immediately. Since we call all of our dogs "puppies", we stumbled across the "puppy time" release command.

When Lola picks up a cat toy, our release command for that is "that's a kitty toy, not a doggie toy, go get your rope". And she brings the cat toy to us, drops it, then runs to get her rope.

And our command for sit is "park it".

Our command to drop something is "share".

We're not normal.

Originally Posted by Momofmany

...We're not normal.

Click to expand...

Again - why am I not surprised!

I wish I could get Franklin to do something like that. He is so stubborn he only listens when he wants to. Thankfully after GiGi gets spayed he is next on the list to get fixed. We saved him for last because he will be the most expensive and since we have no female dogs around here (hes the only dog that lives around here) he was the last priority. Hopefully after he gets fixed he will calm down and maybe be more willing to listen.

Awe that was soooo cute! Puppy Time

Puppy time! Love it!
You've obviously invested the time and patience into training your pups well. I have Jan's book as well, and fully intend to train that way when I finally get a dog.
I used to volunteer at a place that trained service dogs. The trainers could open the kennel doors, put 15 bowls of kibble out and have the 15 Labs wait until "OK" before they charged out and demolished breakfast. a sight to behold.

Originally Posted by pushylady

Puppy time! Love it!

You've obviously invested the time and patience into training your pups well. I have Jan's book as well, and fully intend to train that way when I finally get a dog.
I used to volunteer at a place that trained service dogs. The trainers could open the kennel doors, put 15 bowls of kibble out and have the 15 Labs wait until "OK" before they charged out and demolished breakfast. a sight to behold.

Click to expand...

It actually gets easier to train a larger number of dogs than fewer. My theory is that, by necessity, you are forced to bring that many dogs under control if you want a peaceful existence at all, and the dogs often follow the other's lead.

I used to have 5 dogs so having 3 is a piece of cake for me. I met Jan Fennell in person one time (actually had lunch with her), and asked her what prompted her to get into this field of work. Her answer? When she adopted her 5th dog and realized she had to try something different. I had the same sense when we adopted our 5th dog many years ago. We had been unwittingly using most of her techniques all along. Her books just reinforced it for us.

It's all about loving control. They love us so much that they want to please us. Last night Sam (the red dog) politely asked me if he could join me on the sofa (he places his paw on the sofa and blinks his eyes at me). When I said yes, he leaped up, snuggle up against me and melted in my arms with a big ol' dog grin on his face.