Hi,
My wife and I have an almost 4 months old male puppy named Thomas. And since he is a first pet since the ones we had as kids (for both of us), we have tons of questions on how to properly train him.
I’ve already posted a question about toilet raining and got great answers. Now we need somebody else’s about feeding him.
Here is the scenario: we feed him twice a day around 7am and 5:30pm. But every time we give him food he only takes few bites and then continues to follow us around the house. The only way we can have him eat the whole portion is if one of us stays near him while he eats.
So we are thinking, if we stay with him while he eats we might cause him to develop a habit, and then we always need to be with him while he eats (my wife’s childhood dog had that habit and she says it was a pain.) We can leave the food out until he eats it, but we don’t think that’s good because he is still eating it by the time it is dinnertime.
I’m thinking to try leaving food out for, lets say, 20 minutes and if he chooses to follow us around instead of eating he will learn after few times that the food is gone so he better stay and eat while it’s there.
What should we do?
PS. I should mention that we had him for only a week now.
Thanks a lot,
Alex