Tantrums And Bad Attitutes

[flycow]

Hi all,

First of all, please excuse me for the topic, it's more about my dog's tantrum than a general discussion kinda topic, I dont' know how to edit it.

Here goes, My 1 yr old pup threw some tantrums last night at dinner and I'm not sure what's going on, can anyone shed some light? This is what happened.

I usually put down Diva's dinner and proceed to do some repetitive training with her before letting her eat. She doesn't eat unless I give her the command to do so after the training. The Pack order with us is OH is the top dog, then me, then her. We both take turns to feed her dinner and do training. For the past two days I was the one feeding and she tried to negotiate with me. She whinged and kept putting her focus on the bowl (far away)instead of me and also shift her butt when sitting so that she face the bowl, instead of the usual position by my side. She still do as I say but half heartedly and impatient.

Then last night it escalated, she threw a tantrum. OH fed her and did the same training. Halfway she made the usual whinges, then refused to do it anymore and hide herself into the kennel, refusing to eat. We remove the food straightaway. This has happened once in her life when she was a 8 week old puppy with her assumed position of top dog. We had roast chicken for dinner when she screamed, when we fed her dog food afterwards she turned her head refused to eat in a protest that lasted an hour. It was exactly the same as last night.

It took us 10 months to put her at the bottom of the pack and she was a reasonably well behaved dog with some good manners so far. Can someone tell me if I need to correct last night's behaviour or is it just a one off? Diva is a mildly determined and independent dog compared to most of her siblings, not too extreme but she likes to do things her way as a pup rather than follow her brothers. That was what I observed when I bought her. That's also why I have been using NILIF on her, if she had ran the show from young all hell would have broken loose.

Will Dolers share your experiences on this kind of behaviour? Please advice. Much appreciated.

background info: Pup is not allowed on bed/lounge/chair, also no food straight from food preparation areas or dining table. Her meals are prepared separately. She does pull on the leash half the time when she got excited, just slight tension not full force. We use a halti on 'excitable' days, normal days we use flat collars, we are still correcting her pulling.

edited I suck at grammar and spelling

Edited June 18, 2007 by flycow

[dogdude]

Sounds like just a little test for you to see where she stands in the pack order.

You are doing the right thing, remain consistent.

If she refuses to eat because she is trying to avoid authority, let her go hungry and don't feed her till the following day. She will not starve herself.

[flycow]

"let her go hungry..."

My absolute soft spot on this one, I don't sleep well usually if I didn't feed her dinner. I suspected she knows this. Ok I'd persist.