Teaching a Young Cockapoo to Stay out of the Dining Room During Meals

For this Omaha dog behavior training session we worked with Luna, a 1 year-old Cockapoo to train her to stay away from the table during meals.

Luna had taken our puppy socialization classes which allowed us to move faster in this session. We did a refresher on marker words, the importance of celebrating desired behaviors and providing enough physical exercise and mental stimulation.

If we dont take care of a dog’s basic needs, its not usual for dog behavior problems to pop up. Good behavior isn’t something that happens on its own. Just like parenting, you have to put in the time and effort. Each and every day.

Teaching A Dog to Stay Away From the Dinner Table

Training a dog to respect boundaries starts by creating a practice situation where we can introduce the concept and steps of the process. Just like humans, its best to start in a classroom type setting where the student (dog) can learn what is wanted without other elements (excitment, the smell of food, the entire family gathered in one place, etc). As a Dog Behavior expert, watching people trying to teach a dog in the moment is one of the most commin mistakes I see.

Stopping a dog from being around the table during meals is all about first explaining what you want the dog to do, then providing motivation to do that instead of the dog’s previous behavior. Keeping a dog away from the table during meals takes practice. You can learn an easy way to keep a dog away from the dinner table by watching the free positive dog training video below.

It took a few practice attemts before Luna was able to stay on the dog bed as I stepped back. The first step away is usually the hardest, so we repped it a few times after we filmed the video.  I had the family’s dad and one of the kids practice until they got the same results. Sometimes you have to practice a half step at a time, that was the case with Luna. The key is to go at the dog’s pace. Find an amount they can do, then practice it a few times before progressing. If the dog doesnt perform how we want, that means we are asking for more than the dog can provide at that time.

Exercising Luna before this exercise or practicing this tip to keep a dog away during meal time when she is less energetic can accellerate her progress. You dont have to be a professional Cockapoo dog trainer to teach a dog to stay out of the dining room, but you do need to have patience and work at it often.

One of the things I was concerned about following the sesison is one of the guardian seemed impatient about some of the processes I suggested. Althougth I agree with the guardian that its nice when things happen faster, that is not always realtiy. We get out of our dogs what we put into them. And just like humans, they have good and bad days.

Positive dog training is best done as a habit, this is how something as small as celebrating a desired behavor when it happens on its own is so powerful; its reinforced often. I hope the guardians saw enough progress from Luna to be inspired to be patient at times and make sure to find time to work with this lovely pup on the daily.

Luna also likes to bark at people who pass by her home, but we will share the tips for that problem in another post just about that problem.

To help the family rmember everything we covered in this in home Omaha dog training session, we filed a roadmap to success video that you can watch below.