Food and rewards are powerful reinforcers to teaching your dog who's boss. Dog trainers Mark Peters and Rosemarie Tang share some insights into becoming leader of the pack.
'Eating before the dog is to communicate to it in dog language. [You can] establish natural pack hierarchy by having the leader and ranking pack members [family members] eat first,' explains Peters, a Welshman who runs dog training, pet-sitting and pet-relocation services at Wish You Were Here.
'It's not about just eating before the dog. It's about showing the dog that the alpha dog [the dog owner] or alpha pair have eaten before it. It should understand that all humans are above it in the pack so having different people feed it is important. But they must eat before they give the dog its food.'
The practice, says Peters, is called gesture eating, originally coined by author Jan Fennell of The Dog Listener.
By giving dog owners first priority to eat, this display shows the rest of the pack, or your dog in the house, that the humans are unequivocally the leaders.
'[In the wild] pack members would not approach or challenge the pack leader or challenge while it ate,' says Peters. 'The dogs would watch from a distance, so you should not give any eye contact or talk to your dog while you take your time eating your food.'