Episode #223 How Do I Stop My Dog From Pawing My Leg While I'm Eating Dinner?

Tired of your puppy pawing at your legs every time you sit down to eat? In this episode, we dive into why puppies develop this habit and how you might be reinforcing it without even realizing it. More importantly, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step training plan to teach your pup a polite, alternative behavior—like relaxing on a designated mat or holding a down-stay during meals.

With patience, consistency, and positive reinforcement, you can create a peaceful dining routine for both you and your furry friend. Tune in to learn the best techniques for setting clear boundaries and enjoying stress-free meals with your puppy by your side! 🐶🍽️ #DogTraining #PuppyTips #PositiveReinforcement

Chapters

• 0:00 Client Question: Puppy Pawing During Dinner
• 2:07 Understanding Why Puppies Paw
• 3:29 Teaching Alternative Behaviors
• 5:16 Step-by-Step Bed Training Method
• 8:40 Creating Automatic Mealtime Behaviors
• 9:31 Episode Wrap-Up and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

On today's episode I'm answering a client question. How do I train my puppy to stop pawing my legs while I eat dinner? How do I teach her not to do this? Great question, let's talk about it. Welcome to the Puppy Training Podcast. I'm Amy Jensen, founder of Baxter and Bella, the online puppy school. Here we are all about helping you create the best possible experience raising a puppy, from training tips to practical tricks, all aimed at fostering a happy, well-behaved dog who truly feels like part of the family. So if you are ready to enjoy the journey and strengthen the bond with your dog, let's get started. Hi you guys, thanks for in to the puppy training podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Every once in a while I like to mix things up a little bit and answer questions that come in from you. So today's question this person has a puppy that just wants to paw her leg, probably asking for food, right as she's sitting down to dinner, and that could be kind of annoying. Now she wants to change the behavior. How do we go about it? But first, if you've seen on social media all about our Easter egg hunt, you found an egg here on the podcast. This is your egg episode. So head on over to my Instagram account at Baxter and Bella and DM me letting me know you found the podcast egg. Make sure to include this podcast number 223. Thanks for having a little fun with us. Okay, back to the question of the day. Dog is pawing you while you're trying to eat dinner. So teaching our dog to stop doing something like pawing at our legs while I'm eating dinner that's a really important thing to consider as we establish boundaries with our dog and we teach them polite behavior at mealtime. Understanding why my puppy chooses that behavior will help me as I decide how to handle it. I want to be careful not to accidentally or unintentionally reinforce it. And then what can I do? How can I get my puppy to do a more desirable behavior which is going to set them up for success and me as well? Less frustration, for sure. So. So first let's understand the behavior.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Dogs naturally seek attention. They love attention. They're social creatures and they want reinforcement from us. Pawing is a common way that they communicate their desire. They're asking for something. So if they come and paw at us, they want something. Right now, most likely, I'm going to assume in this situation the dog probably wants food, but other times they might want your attention, they might want you to play with them During mealtime. Your puppy likely paws at your legs because she's learned that, okay, if I paw at your leg, I get some form of response. Okay, maybe you just look at her, maybe you talk to her and tell her no, maybe you've given her a treat to try to get her to do something else. While you might have the best of intentions when doing all of these things, they might not always pan out how you expected or hoped. Some of that is going to be interpreted by her as attention, which means it's reinforcing that pawing behavior. Without realizing it.

Speaker 1: 3:03

Many of us we reinforce unwanted behaviors. If you've ever fed your puppy from the table when she paws at you, she's learned that persistence pays off. Even negative attention, such as pushing her away or scolding her, can be rewarding, because it still involves interaction, which is part of what she's going for. So the key to changing this type of behavior is to ensure that pawing no longer leads to any type of reward, while an alternative behavior is consistently reinforced. So we're going to teach her a behavior to do. That's what we're going to pay her to do before she even starts to paw us, and then that new behavior that we're paying will become the behavior she tries in the future. So teaching an alternative behavior is the key, rather than simply trying to stop the pine.

Speaker 1: 3:48

It's kind of hard to say I want to train my dog to stop doing something. It's much easier to focus on what do I want my puppy to do when I sit down to eat a meal, so it's way more effective to train your puppy to do something during mealtime. Now a great alternative is teaching her to go to a designated spot, such as a mat, a rug, a bed, or even have her lay under the table in a down stay. So I would pick one of those, pick one that works for you and we're going to introduce the spot. So let's just say that I have a raised bed near my table and I want my dog, during mealtimes, to go lay on their bed and I want them to stay there until released. So I'm going to introduce the bed to my dog. I'm going to put it in a spot near my dining area, but not in the way, so tuck it out of the way, but close enough to you that you can definitely deliver some food rewards as you enjoy your meal. So we're going to use favorite food rewards, just small little pieces about the size of your pinky fingernail, and we're going to do this intermittently to encourage our puppy to remain on that bed.

Speaker 1: 4:48

Now, to get them to go to the bed, you might need to use a little food to lure them onto the bed. Lure them into a down mark. Yes, pay them. Count to two seconds. Drop another little half a treat, right, very teeny, tiny size of a pea, you guys, little, little but tasty. And then count to two, drop another one. Count to five. Drop another one. Count to 10, drop another one.

Speaker 1: 5:08

We're going to slowly increase the amount of time in between when our puppy gets a reward. If you increase time too quickly, your puppy will jump off. They'll get frustrated, right. They'll probably come back and try to paw at you. Too quickly, your puppy will jump off. They'll get frustrated, right. They'll probably come back and try to paw at you. So we want to make sure in the beginning that we are reinforcing frequently enough that the puppy's willing to wait that next second for the next reward to come. Over time, as you do more and more sessions, the time between food rewards will be greater. Your puppy will have more patience. They know they're going to be rewarded and they're willing to wait a little longer for that next reward to come until finally you can cue them to go to their bed.

Speaker 1: 5:47

You can enjoy your meal, cue them to get off their bed and then reward them. That's the ultimate goal. So marking and rewarding is important when our puppy steps onto the mat. If they are nervous about the mat or the bed or the spot going under the table can be a little nerve wracking for some puppies. Whichever spot you've chosen, let's just say they're scared to get on the bed. Then you might just start there. Can you lure them onto the bed, mark? Yes, let them get off. Lure them onto the bed, mark? Yes, let them get off. And then we want to get to the point where they'll go onto the bed and they will go into a down position. So a lot of this. They will go into a down position. So a lot of this you're going to introduce and teach before mealtime.

Speaker 1: 6:25

It doesn't even have to be in the same room, you can be somewhere else. Introduce the bed or the mat or the rug or whatever you're using. Make sure your puppy's comfortable and likes and enjoys laying and settling on that surface. Sometimes I choose a surface and my dog doesn't love it. That's not really going to be super ideal if I want them to stay there a long time. It's going to be much easier and the process will be much faster if my dog naturally loves this spot that I've chosen for them. Make sense Once my puppy is comfortable.

Speaker 1: 6:51

Getting on the bed, getting off the bed, laying down on the bed, settling on the bed for a few minutes or seconds, even at the beginning, is fine. We can start to put it on cue. Or seconds, even at the beginning is fine, we can start to put it on cue. So what you're going to do is simply add in the cue go to bed, go to mat, go under whatever you want to say, depending on the behavior you're trying to achieve. So let's just say we're using the bed again, I would cue my dog, go to bed and then, as soon as she gets on the bed and lays down, that's when I mark yes and I pay her If she needs a little help, as I first introduced that cue.

Speaker 1: 7:23

So I'll say the cue lure her onto the bed into a down, mark yes, pay her. I'm going to do that several times and then I'm going to drop out the help. So then I'll say the cue, I'll drop out the luring. She's going to be able to figure this out on her own because she's done it a couple of times and she got paid for it. So in her little brain she's trying to figure out how do I get that reward again? What did I do? Oh yeah, I jumped on this bed and I laid down and then Amy said yes, so we want to get rid of that luring as quickly as possible, but it might be needed five, 10, 20 times, okay, until your dog figures it out.

Speaker 1: 7:55

Then you can skip that luring part. You just say the cue, the dog does the behavior, we mark yes, we pay them, and from then on you're just lengthening the duration. So that's where that intermittent reinforcement comes in in the beginning, especially with a young puppy that doesn't have patience. It's going to be seconds. Once you get to 20 seconds I feel like most dogs figure out oh yeah, I'm supposed to just hold still until I hear that release cue. Make sure you do train that release cue. We can help you in our program.

Speaker 1: 8:22

Train both this go to bed cue and the release cue. If your dog doesn't understand a release cue. It's hard for them to know when they can get off. So we train both and then we just start to reinforce the behavior. Pretty soon, your dog's going to do it automatically. You don't even have to say go to bed.

Speaker 1: 8:39

As you head into the kitchen and sit down for your meal, your dog's going to do it automatically. You don't even have to say go to bed. As you head into the kitchen and sit down for your meal, your dog's going to go, run over to their spot, lay down and wait for their rewards to come. Which notice how we've eliminated the pawing behavior. It's gone. It's not even part of the pattern. We head to the kitchen, we get our meal, the dog goes to their bed, they lay down, and that's the idea Is we want to teach our puppy an alternative behavior, a behavior that they can't do.

Speaker 1: 9:03

The pine while they're doing this new behavior. It's incompatible, right? So pick a behavior you want your dog to do during mealtime, teach them how to do that behavior and then you sidestep all of the pine in the process and that just gets washed away. Cool. We can help you teach this and any other type of training behavior similar to this inside of our program, the online puppy school at Baxter and Bella. Check it out If you haven't already.

Speaker 1: 9:31

We have trainers that you can talk to one-on-one. You can email us your questions. You can join our live group Q and A chats. Weekly. We have classes, courses, you name it. We're here to help you. We want you to be successful. All right, you guys? Thanks for checking in. Have a great week and happy training. Thanks for tuning in to the puppy training podcast. I hope today's tips help you feel more confident and excited about raising your dog. Remember, with a little patience and consistency, you can create a loving bond and a well-behaved pup who's a joy to have in your family. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with fellow puppy parents. For more resources, visit Baxter and Bella online. Until next time, happy training.