I've discovered the secret to...

Gaining weight.

Don't have any food in the house.

At my house, I always have a full fridge and a full pantry. And, generally speaking, I'm a big fan of healthy food.

At the apartment, all I have in my fridge is dog food, bottled water and two sticks of butter. I've been painting and shopping for furniture and junk so I've been eating dinner with my parents. So far, so good. she cooks healthy, too.

But then, at night, I start getting weird cravings and wind up at Dairy Barn at 10 o'clock buying doughnuts and pecan coffee rings.

This should change in a week or so, once I get some pots, pans, and cutlery on the premises.

In the meantime, I don't think the dog likes having her dry food kept in the fridge. I brought new bags here with me and after I opened them, I realized I didn't have any containers to put them in. She doesn't like to eat in the morning now. She also knows that we will go upstairs at some point and, when I'm not looking, my father will feed her something. (Toast, etc.)

Jasper has also discovered the secret to gaining weight. Grandparents.

My father got what he deserved on Sunday, when we were at my brother's house. There were several dogs present. I told my father DO NOT FEED THE DOGS! He didn't listen. For the rest of the day, the dogs followed him all over the place.

He kept screaming LEAVE ME ALONE.

They didn't.

I've tried for years to break him of this habit. Nothing seems to work. How do you get OTHER people to NOT feed your pets?

Comments

[Linda]

Hide them!

[lwt]

the pets or the other people?
i don't know who lived with my cats previously, but my cats never beg for food at the table. one of them will go to her own dish, sit there and cry that she is starving. the other one will start walking where she is not supposed to be, often on my computer keyboard [she can shut down my computer in a heart beat and last week she deleted a program i was about to install]. but it's more of their own food that they want.

[Tom McAdam]

My dog has marked my mother-in-law as a soft touch. When we are over at her house, the dog whines until my mother-in-law gives her something to eat. We've told her to stop (both the dog and my mother-in-law) but it's like talking to a brick wall, in both cases.

[Bill Ervolino]

FROM BILL: Jasper was trained to never bother me while I'm eating. She knows she'll get a little something when I'm done, and thats how it works. Convincing your father -- and all of the other strange people your dog encounters -- to do likewise is the real challenge. My brother's dachsunds only eat dog food and so they are scavengers and annoying. (They have chewed up the dining room furniture, killed and eaten rabbits in the backyard and one of them ate an entire tray of lasagna.) In an idea world, I would train every pet, but, alas, I don't have the time.

[Sonny]

Had an uncle that used to give his dog Lucy coffee and toast every morning

[KimW]

If we are having a gathering with food, I usually put the cats upstairs, in separate rooms. I also don't want to take the chance that they will be let out either by accident or on purpose by someone not
knowing any better. Also Savannah Fluffanella is still learning manners. Usually, a well placed squirt with a water pistol will have them bolting for the upstairs. Maybe you can try that on your dad (just kidding).

Seriously though, feeding dogs and cats food with onions can cause liver damage. Something as innocent as a raisin or grape can also cause problems. I usually tell people that the cats are on a special diet, and if they want to feed them something, they should be prepared to clean up any barf or worse.

[m.b.]

My grandparents would give Duchess, their Boston Terrier, coffee and toast too. She would wait by her bowl for her "breakfast" and liked her coffee with milk and sugar. I still think it is the funniest thing. I have fond memories of Dutch and her coffee breath.

[Evelyn]

One of our dogs was adopted from us as a puppy and returned when she was about nine months old, and the other has lived his entire life here - they were both born in my living room. Grendel, the lifer, is a begger, and Ginger, the returnee, is a thief. Ginger will steal anything she desires, right out of your hands, without blinking an eye. Gren justs stares at you and barks if he thinks he has a chance of getting anything from you. Needless to say, Grendel annoys guests, but Ginger is the stealth bomber. I've heard "Did I put my sandwich/hamburger/ bowl down by you?" too many times, usually when Ging is no where to be seen, having slunk off somewhere to enjoy whatever it is she just purloined from a guest. Grendel has learned if he behaves, he might get a tidbit from me, so he usually is a good dog while people are eating, as long as I remember him afterwards. But their mother, Molly, was in a category all her own. First week we had her, we learned that she assumed the top of the dinning room table was her place to eat. We had ordered chinese, and suddenly she (very pregnant) jumped from the floor to the table top, zeroed in on a container, and just sat down and helped herself, as if this were normal and OK. She got her dinner while we were eating, in another room, from that point on. If we didn't do that, she'd just make a place for herself - on the table.

(She weighed about 45 pounds, too, so convincing her to get off the table was also always an interesting thing.She didn't like to be told to leave, let's just say - although I usually won the argument, eventually.)