If oyur dog, sits in fornto fo you and gives o that solemn, sad look, do you fall for it and has the dog then manipulated you with those eyes and then does that become a learned behaviour. Begging for example?

No. Yes, and yes. I am spectacularly good at ignoring dogs who exhibit the cute factor. Dogs don't understand the concept of "just this once then". Therefore if (for example) she is allowed on the sofa because she looked so sweet "just this once", that would then become the new rule. So in my house it's either allowed, or not.

No I don't because I love my food too much so nobody gets any of it! None of my animalss bother me as they know there's no chance

My OH though can't help himself & that's why he has two dogs dribbling all over him & 2 cats trying to ambush him for his dinner.

Jack was born with the goo goo eyes, its his permanant look

__________________

Tummels never begged, not even as a pup he has got goo goo eyes though but being half lab that was always going to happen he doesn't get his own way because of it though.

The answer is to manipulate the dog into doing that quietly (cute auto-sit say with twinkly eyes) when it wants something, rather than a more obnoxious attention seeking behaviour. But you must then notice, or you don't reinforce the good behaviour and extinguish the unwanted behaviours.

__________________
For eager & reliable recall, be fun for the dog to come back to! Then often send them off right away to do what they wanted!
DT&B - Glossary of acronyms & jargon terms.
Encouraging good behaviours, whilst consistently avoiding practise of bad alternatives leads to extinction of the bad. So if dog sits 6/10 times it doesn't sit 4/10 times, encouraging with the right rewards (positively-reinforcing) enough for 9/10 times means it now fails to sit only 1/10 times, sit 10/10 means...

it's a false premise that dogs are somehow puppet-masters of humans, who are helpless in their coils.

rewarding a dog for waiting patiently while we make or get their food, teaching them to leave the kitchen
during meal-prep, or to lie on a mat during meals are all simple alternatives.

__________________
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
*wolves R wolves, dogs R dogs, + primates R us.*
tmp, sept-2007

I used to all the time.

We stopped when Duke started drooling on our feet.

He now, well both him and Logan are out of the room while I'm preparing food and are not allowed in the same room as us while we're eating.

If we want to give any scraps we put it in their bowls throughout the day and then they have it at lunchtime and before we go to bed out of their bowls.

__________________

Ours are masters of the goo goo eyes They usually get something as I hate waste.
I also had a cat once who ambushed your plate from below. A paw would appear on your plate, feel around until it found something then it would hook it and it would disappear over the side. I loved that cat! She would also climb up the stairs and wait until you carried her down

__________________
Who needs walkies when you can drive!

But all behaviours that we teach our dogs (intentionally or not ) work this way. The dog trains us - and they are better human trainers than we are dog trainers.
Learning is about an animal manipulating their environment so as to access or avoid consequences.
We are the most influential part of our pet dog's environment and as such when we train our dog to for example sit for a treat they are training us to release treats by sitting!

Personally I love it when a dog gets the training game and learns how to train humans.

This of course is how all those undesired attention seeking behaviours come about - we are usually rewarding them and therefore training them albeit unintentionally

__________________
Anne, owned by Rufus & Tripod

Pet Central site & blog
Join us on FaceBook & Follow us on twitter

"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts." - John Steinbeck

"If you don't want your dog to bite you, don't be an a**hole to him." ~ Dr. Ian Dunbar