How To Train a Young Dog to Stop Stealing Other Dogs’ Food

Molly a one-year old Bocho/ Shih Tzu mix, needed help to stop stealing food from the older dog’s food bowl.

In this Omaha puppy training session I worked with Molly’s guardians to help them train Molly to stop taking food from their other dog’s food bowl. Molly is a young puppy with a lot of energy and can get over excited when it comes to food. There other dog is six years old and hesitant to eat all of his food right away. Often times the younger dog can intimidate the older dog from eating with all of the energy that they bring to the table, so I showed them our Structured Feeding exercise to help with this issue.

As you can see in the video above Molly wanted to cross the invisible boundary in the beginning of this exercise but quickly learned where the boundary was. This allowed their older dog, Eddie to have an opportunity to eat his dinner with her respecting his space. After the video was complete Eddie did end up eating his entire meal once he realized that Molly wouldn’t crowd him while he was eating!

By the end of the session Molly was looking to her guardians for leadership and direction. As a Shih Tzu trainer I would recommend using our Petting with a Purpose technique to keep up this good behavior, that way you are rewarding Molly for being calm. We wrapped up this puppy behavior session with Molly’s Roadmap to Success video, which you can watch below.