Hello Courtney, It sounds like the food stealing is happening when you are not present. If that is the case, then you will need to either train your dog to eat at designated times so that the food is not left out when you are not present, or to use an electric collar barrier device on the other dogs if their owner is willing. The last option is to confine Spike in another room that the other dog's cannot access with his food, to prevent them from getting to his food. I would recommend teaching Spike to eat his food at designated times while you are present and can enforce the other dogs leaving him alone, and then take up the food bowl after he finishes or is full. To teach that check out the Wag! article that I have linked below. https://wagwalking.com/training/eat-at-certain-times-1 For Spike I would recommend using the "Schedule" method from the linked article. Expect him to be picky for the first few days but he should begin to learn that that is meal time and to eat more within two weeks. When you feed him you can either split his daily food between breakfast and dinner or you can feed him all of it at breakfast and then feed him the remainder at dinner time. Some dogs prefer it to be fresher at each meal though. As long as he is being offered his total daily food amount the ratio of morning food to night food does not matter. Pay attention to when he tends to eat more and offer him the most at that time. Once Spike is eating at designated times, then when it is his food time and you are there to enforce the other dogs leaving his food alone use the "Claim and Control" method from the original article or a combination of the "Leave It" method and the "Claim and Control" method, to teach the other dogs to leave your dog's food alone. Here is the article that you originally commented on where you can find those methods for teaching the dogs to leave him alone. https://wagwalking.com/training/not-eat-other-dogs-food Teaching them to leave his food alone will only work when you are at home though, which is why you need to teach your dog to eat at designated times. With consistency you should be able to be in the next room and not standing right there but your presence is still necessary for the training to be effective. If you do not take up the food after you depart, something else will need to enforce the training. That is why you need to use a barrier device such as PetSafe Pawz Away. Do not use that unless the other owner chooses to do so. You cannot control what another pet owner does only how you train your own dog. Best of luck training, Caitlin Crittenden

Aug. 15, 2018

Hello Nathan, At six weeks of age whining in a crate is very normal. Six weeks is very young for crate training. That does not mean that you should not start now but expect it to take him several weeks for him to learn to be quiet in the crate. If you just brought him home and he only recently left his litter mates, then he has not learned how to be alone yet. Place him in the crate with a hollow Kong chew toy stuffed with moist dog food that is easy to get out of the Kong. Expect him to cry. When he stops for a couple of seconds, go over to the crate and drop some of his favorite treats inside and leave again without saying anything. He will likely ignore the treats and continue crying at first, but you are showing him that being quiet gets you to come over and gets him rewards. As he becomes more used to the crate his fear should decrease, even if he does not like being in there yet, and he should become more interested in the treats. After he has been in the crate for an an hour, wait until he is quiet for a couple of seconds, and then calmly let him out. Ignore him for five minutes after he gets out so that getting out of the crate will not be too exciting. If he needs to go potty, then take him outside without saying anything to him until he is outside. Expect him to protest every time that you put him in the crate for the next two to three weeks. It is normal. Don't let him out unless he is quiet for at least a couple of seconds or he will continue crying in the crate past the two or three weeks because he will have learned that barking gets him out. Every time that you put him in the crate give him a Kong stuffed with moistened dog food to help him like the crate and to teach him to occupy himself with chewing while he is inside. To stuff a Kong, place Marco's dog food into a bowl and cover it with water. Let is sit out until the food turns into mush. Add more water if needed. Once the food has turned to mush, add a tiny bit of peanut butter to it and very loosely stuff the Kong with the mush. Put the Kong into a ziplock bag and then into the freezer. Make several of these ahead of time so that you can simply grab one from the freezer as needed. When you purchase peanut butter for this, make sure that it does NOT contain Xylitol.Xylitol is an artificial sweetener that is deadly to dogs. If the problem persists when he is older you can correct him while he is in the crate, but wait until he is several months older or you might make the problem worse by punishing him. Almost all puppies start out crying in the crate for long periods of time. The trick is to give them something else to do, like chewing, to be consistent, and to wait. You can encourage him to like the crate in other ways by following the methods from the article that I have linked below. Since he is less interested in the treats right now, I recommend using the "Fun and Games" method or multiple methods. https://wagwalking.com/training/like-a-crate Best of luck training, Caitlin Crittenden

Aug. 1, 2018