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Begging for food

2317 Views 24 Replies 16 Participants Last post by  Willow518
Hello, I'm new to this site. I did not search for similar problems as mine because I have done so much research on this topic and all I see is the same suggestion. Don't give food to the dog off of your plate. Well we never have.
My husband and I adopted 2 Jack Russel terriers. The male is 7 and the female is 5. Apparently their previous owner fed them table scraps all the time. The female, Chello, will just sit there and stare at you while you're eating. The male, Banjo, hops up and down - whimpers and just makes a downright nuisance of himself. He's driving my husband crazy to the point that he doesn't want to keep him.
We've had them for about 3 months now. Not once have we given them any of the food we have been eating. Every site we've gone to has said to break the behavior, just stop giving them food. I would think after 3 months, if this were to work, it would have by now.
We've tried putting him in other rooms and crating him. We can't even enjoy our food for all the barking and whining and whimpering. It's really making my husband miserable which in turn is making me miserable. Is this a lost cause with a 7 year old male dog? I don't want to give him up and I don't want to separate the dogs, they have always been together, but this is becoming extremely unbearable. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Jen
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I just ignored Wally and he'll give up.
Ah, but Wally is not a Jack Russell.
No, but he is a dog. The same approach worked on my Eskie.
The same approaches generally work, but some types require extra owner commitment. Terriers are not renowned as dogs who easily give up on strategies that have worked for them in the past.
It will still work, just takes more time perhaps. I had a JRT at work I got to do leave-its and wait at the door, no problem. Being super food motivation was good.
I don't find terriers at all difficult, but they generally demand a lot of your attention. I've gotten some good stuff from friends' dogs where my friends thought I was some kind of dog wizard. There's no trick to it at all. Give a terrier something interesting to do, and you're halfway to home plate. Give them your full attention (without screaming at them), keep a little sump'n-sump'n in your pocket, and they are extremely willing. Their intelligence is widely underrated.
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