Obviously I am not addressing sitting today. The art of hand feeding a dog is important.
All dogs have different strengths and attitudes. It is important that you know your breed. A lab should display soft mouth touch, whereas a rottweiler may present the opposite for good reasons. It depends upon what they were initially bred for.
A lab is a retriever and a bird dog. They go into the field or water to recover killed birds for their master. If they were to chomp down on the bird it would be rendered useless to the master. Instead a lab has such a gentle mouth I have been able to teach one to fetch a raw egg and not break it in its mouth. His reward was the raw egg after he brought it back to me.
When giving your dog a treat it is important to ensure that he/she is calm and fully focused on you. An excited dog will unintentionally chomp down.
I have Shih-Tzu's who weight a mere 14 lbs but when excited have drawn blood whilst retrieving said treat.
Two of my 5 are excitable while the other three can take a treat gently from my hand. The other 2 need to be told to be gentle and then I place the treat in my fingers and lead in to their mouth with the back of my hand.
I place my hand in their mouth and as long as they do not grab my hand, I release the treat. If they show any move to grab the treat from my hand I pull my hand away and say "No", "Be Gentle". I then repeat the process.
With larger dogs it is best to start as a pup. Placing the hand in the mouth gets them to taste your scent and associate it with being gentle.
If it is an older dog, make sure you know its feeding habits and how it retrieves treats. Always lead with the back of your hand and remove it if they show a tendency to clamp down. Larger dogs can cause more damage to you even if it is accidental.
Besides being calm, you too need to be calm and assertive at all times. If you too are not focused on your dog then you might miss the tell tale sign that the dog is not focused and excited. You might get bitten by accident as a result. I know, I did this year by Dakota, and the look on her face was that of a very sorry dog. She got the treat, was not hit or spanked. I simply said "ow!" and then I told her "No", "Be Gentle" and gave her the treat.
For several weeks after she was ever so gentle. Now she is back to her old ways of being excited so I have to focus on her and then she receives the treat after she sits and is calm.
If you have more than one dog, it is sometimes better to separate them at treat time especially if one is excited and prone to chomping. Its a competition between the other dogs and sometimes it is easier to reduce the anxiety level by giving the one a treat separate from the other.
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