Lovely article, plain sense made entertaining. However, the entire argument arises from an error in living conditions: these people lack hounds.
A proper lifestyle shared with loyal hounds ensures that silly sanitation issues such as these never even arise. "5 second rule?" hah! food don't bounce twice, even if the hound was outside when it was dropped.
"Leave it" is a very useful command and I'm glad our dog knows it. I don't know why our local park has multiple bread rolls strewn around every few days, or why I dropped an entire container of salt on the floor yesterday, but it helps in both cases.
He will by default leave anything he sees that we drop, but out of sight all bets are off.
ha, my rescue dog was quite reticent about many common and natural dog behaviors like that, which led me to conclude she was over-disciplined (or perhaps worse) by her previous owners.
nearly 3 years on, she still hesitates eating what i explicitly give her for meals in bowls, even with much fanfare and encouragement, but easily welcomes treats given by hand. she won’t eat anything on the ground indoors without permission. it’s so uncharacteristic of dogs in general.
she knows by now not to eat random things off the ground on our walks, but sometimes she’ll sheepishly sneak a munch anyways when i’m not paying attention. she was found wandering the streets so maybe that explains some of this behavior.
Yeah, ours was found straying, no collar, no chip, nothing known about her before that.
She's been trained, (like, she walks on the left, just behind the last person in the group, with a slack lead or no lead at all) and she was afraid of _everything_ to start with. Throwing anything, fast movements, anything that looked like hitting would send her scuttling with a tucked tail.
oh wow, that sounds eerily familiar! mine spent the first 2+ months having anxiety diarrhea at 3 in the morning, worried that i would hit her for breaking some impossible to discern and arbitrary human rule.
i actually detrained my dog from walking on the left behind me because it otherwise reinforced anxiety, low self-esteem, and a strict dominance relationship, which just made me sad (and her too, i'm sure). i now let her walk freely to engender self-confidence as well as a measure of independence. she's still very obedient so will take direction quite willingly (sometimes getting anxious even now when she can't figure out what i want, though much less frequently).
In truth we too have a command: shout "Crumbs!" and they come hoover up anything nearby, including things we didn't notice.
Those who say "dont share food," do have a point; it's also important to teach the hounds civility about sharing food. It's important to teach the hounds civility about everything tho so I think some make too big a deal of food.
When we cook dinner we're surrounded by an adoring, attentive audience, eager to assist and suggest the addition of more curry sauce.
A proper lifestyle shared with loyal hounds ensures that silly sanitation issues such as these never even arise. "5 second rule?" hah! food don't bounce twice, even if the hound was outside when it was dropped.