Chilling out with food

[Leigha]

Food used to be a huge ordeal for us. We had to manage at least 3 dog fights every feeding because we hadn't figured out our feeding routine yet. Well, now we have a feeding routine that we pretty much stick to and our feeding situation has gotten SOOOO much better. Bruiser no longer tries to eat the weenies when we try to feed. He would block out the weenies from getting near the food as we scooped into bowls and just in general be really snarky. Well tonight we noticed that all three were in the kitchen with J when he was pulling out the chickie wings for dinners and there was excitement, but no fighting.

He's also getting better with treats. You can tell that he's worried the others are going to get something he doesn't, but he doesn't try to attack them the way he used to. Tonight J was working on "wait" and "stay" in the living room, and Kole was running up to J, and Bruiser stayed in his wait and stay. That's pretty huge for us, so we're really proud. He's definitely not perfectly fine with it, but he's getting a lot better.

I'm not even sure why it changed. The only thing we did differently was the feeding ritual, and to make sure Bruiser gets his treats first. It's nice that those fights have stopped though, because that pretty much means that all skirmishes are slowing down since those were the biggies. Now all we deal with is when Kole picks on Bruiser and bites him for getting on the couch (no clue where all this courage came from in Kole) or when Bruiser REALLY wants to play with Lu and Kole jumps in between them.

[Fundog]

Cool!

I've noticed my girls will sniff each other's breath, just to make sure one didn't get something the other did not.

[***Melissa***]

Hey Leigha, that's great!! Whatever you're doing, it's obviously working, so well done

Oh, and my two don't fight over food, but they def make sure they both got the same thing!! Fundog, they also seem to do breath sniffing

[Mattie]

Well done Leigha