Rehabilitating a Food Thief: Part 1 – Poppy's Problem

The other day I got an email from my friend Jane, a dedicated volunteer with the Cahor animal refuge in France. She shared with me the story of Poppy, a young Pointer / Weimaraner cross who had recently given birth to eight beautiful puppies and, lucky for her puppies, had been fostered out to a very generous care-giver.

Poppy's pups (photo: dog::links)

Despite being a gentle, trusting and extremely affectionate dog who enjoys the company of people to the point where she readily allows them to handle her pups, Poppy came into care with little training and a pathological need - she likes to steal food. When she was found, the heavily pregnant Poppy was starving. It is likely she had been abandoned, probably due to her pregnancy, and was thus forced to fend for herself, something domesticated dogs are just not equipped to do. Perhaps Poppy had a fondness for helping herself before her ordeal, perhaps not, it is impossible to say. What would be fair to assume though, is that Poppy’s starvation and the subsequent fear of not having enough to eat have resulted in her becoming a notorious food thief.

Poppy (photo: dog::links)

Stealing food is a common behavior in many dogs, not just those who have been forced to fend for themselves; food after all is a basic requirement to survival and if it is not readily available most dogs will resort to stealing to meet their nutritional needs. In Poppy’s case it might be simply that she has a propensity to make the most of an opportunity, or there could be more to it than a basic need for food. The trauma of being abandoned, coping with the physiological changes that accompany pregnancy, and that perpetual state of being hungry may have triggered in Poppy a psychological need to steal food. This behavior can easily be further reinforced because of the attention that Poppy gets, albeit negative, should her humans shoo her away from the food, or punish her for stealing it.

If any combination of these factors is in play, then Poppy’s condition will not be addressed just by giving her plenty of food to eat. If you look at it from her point of view, Poppy has likely learned through her ordeal that the only way to guarantee she will get a meal is to take whatever she can find. Perhaps in the past she had been regularly fed and food just miraculously and reliably appeared as it does for most pet dogs or perhaps she only received meager rations from her previous owners. Regardless of her past life, when Poppy was left to her own devices any previous supply line was severed - food was no longer on offer - and Poppy would have needed to revert to whatever means possible to stay alive.

Just because food starts to appear out of nowhere once more, doesn’t mean it will last forever and Poppy’s natural instincts will tell her to take whatever she can find, whenever she can. If, when this happens, a great fuss breaks out and she is chased away from the food, this just reinforces her initial desire to steal, perhaps making the item to be stolen much higher in value than she previously thought because there is competition for obtaining it.

The table below shows one way of describing the existing behavior :

Describe existing behavior: steals food, runs away to eat it in seclusion
Opportunities	Dog loose, food readily available: laid out on the table, on the kitchen bench, in shopping bags on the floor, in the cat's bowl
Cues (triggers)	Sight or smell of food; attention of humans
Reinforcers	The physiological satisfaction that comes from eating the food, attention from humans, yelling, commotion, running, game of “get away”

Another way to look at the situation is as part of a behavior chain in which the stealing is continually being reinforced.

Behavior Chain format adapted from Karen Pryor Academy Dog Training Program

We see this happening frequently enough with humans that it should be no surprise when it also happens with dogs. People steal for the same reasons: the desire for what they don’t have is greater than any consequences that might occur for the action, and always worth the risk when faced with the option of doing without. In fact, many thieves steal for the attention it attracts to them, they like the notoriety that accompanies their actions.

So does this mean that rehabilitating a food thief is futile? Luckily for Poppy and other dogs like her, no.

Through a dedicated and consistently positive approach using operant conditioning with high levels of reinforcement, Poppy can be taught to respond to food in a different way and to look to her new owner as the source of all things good in her life. This is an ideal situation for using a clicker or a similar marker to indicate to the dog when she is displaying appropriate behavior and to reward her with a high value treat.

In my next blog on this topic, I will detail one way in which Poppy and other dogs who steal food can be conditioned to leave food alone and instead make the sight of such food a cue to do something else entirely.

Puppy Mill-Induced Phobias – Part 2: Canine Anorexia

With Honey in foster care

When Blue came to us at the end of January 2011, it was his third change of environment in six weeks. In foster care he had three humans and four other dogs with whom he could play and from whom he could model his behavior. Coming from such a large extended family to our nuclear one of Martin and me, must have been a major shock for the little fella.

Most dogs are reasonably resistant to stressful situations like a change of environment and adapt after a few days. When Blue went off his food, we thought that this must be the case. We’d been careful to follow as closely as possible the routine passed to us from Blue’s foster care including the type of food, the amounts and feeding times. At first Blue would eat, then he would nibble but by the end of that first week he’d completely gone off his food altogether.

Diagnosing the Problem

Nothing worked, not his regular kibble, not tasty treats, not even a dog’s favorite human food – roast chicken. Was this another of his emerging phobias? Could a dog have a phobia to food? In a panic I took Blue to the vet, he was due for his booster shot anyway and I decided to make it a full check-up. The vet could find nothing physically wrong with Blue that would create such a disinterest in food – the vet’s advice? “Starve him for a few days, sooner or later he’ll start eating again.” And he handed me a free sample of Science Diet to try.

Not surprisingly Blue turned his nose up at the new food and of course I was not prepared to starve him. Instead I did some research of my own and tried to determine just what sort of condition Blue had. As with any sort of internet research there is a great need to sift through the dross to find the gems that you are after, and this was very much the case here. Apparently everyone has an opinion on what causes a dog to stop eating. The more I read the more I came to believe that Blue was suffering from some form of canine anorexia. Dr Etienne Cote on the site PetPlace.com describes anorexia as “a term used to describe the situation where an animal loses his appetite and does not want to eat or is unable to eat.”  This was most definitely the situation with Blue. Not only was he not willing to feed himself, any offers of tempting morsels by hand would be tentatively taken and then promptly spat out. Dr. Cote goes on to explain that unlike hunger, which is a physiological condition stimulated by the body’s need for energy, appetite is psychological, and dependent on memory and association.

Was Blue making some association between food and his past life? Were there some hidden triggers that sparked fearful memories that were destroying his appetite?

Devising a Solution

I took to data collecting and analysing every aspect of Blue’s interaction with food: from his cautious approach to the bowl, his tentative sniffs and surreptitious, whale-eye looks over his shoulder to the backing up and sidling away, head and tail lowered, leaving the food untouched. Was it the food bowl? It was made of metal and by then we had learned of his phobia for all things metallic – from ventilation grates and drain covers to hydrants and cars. Or was it what was in the bowl - the food itself? Had he been punished in the past for eating? Did he now associate food with some sort of pain?

It soon became obvious that we needed to do something and do it fast. Blue wasn’t eating and if we couldn’t get him to do so soon he would need medical intervention. The first thing I did was completely change his routine. Nothing we did was the same as before. I took away the food bowls and the meal times. Then I changed the food itself. He’d been on a self-imposed fast now for several days and I needed to get him to eat something. 

Through my research I learned that not all dog foods are created equal and it seemed to me that dried kibble was probably not the best option for my dog anyway. I found some recipes for changing a dog’s diet from commercial products to home prepared meals which involved cooked rice with ground or shredded meat.

When we lived in Malaysia one of the delicacies we would go to Melaka for was their chicken rice balls. I soon found myself in full production making batch after batch of these things. Why? Blue may have lost his appetite for food but he had plenty enthusiasm for small balls. My thinking was that if I could establish a new positive relationship between Blue and food, by using an association with the balls he loved, then that might by-pass his anorexia enough to enable him to eat.

Feeding times became training times and by extension “fun” times. All food was now hand-delivered to Blue, just as a treat would be in a formal training situation. I had not yet started clicker training at this stage, but I did engage a form of operant conditioning – Blue soon learned that eating a little of a rice ball, earned him playtime with a real ball. Eating a little more, got him attention and praise, and more ball fun. I wish back then I knew about the squeeze tubes used by campers and climbers, they would have saved me the slimy delivery of squelchy rice balls.

After a while I got smart and started stuffing toys full of the stuff – Kongs and hollow rubber balls. I would freeze these and they created a game with a built-in treat. Cream cheese was soon added to my list of new foods, which now included homemade paté, steak’n’kidney’n’rice and doggy scouse. The rice balls had become more meatballs and they now included vegetables and herbs. Blue wasn’t eating much of any of these, but he was eating – a teaspoonful here, and tablespoon there, a meatball over there. The bulk of Blue’s diet though was made up of treats – tiny bits of hotdog, dried chicken cubes, lamb treats, including dried intestine, and his all-time favourite barbecued ostrich – these are expensive foods, but Blue was eating them and as a result the associations he was making with food were changing.

Problem Resolution

My strategy was working – Blue was getting his appetite back but at a huge cost to me. I was spending more time preparing meals for him than I was for my husband and me. I don’t know how long I could have continued to do this though, for by this time I was well into my KPA training program and had other huge commitments on my time. Luckily, I didn’t have to; two things happened that changed Blue’s eating habits for good and brought an end to endless hours in the kitchen.

The first of these was the adoption of our Beauceron X pup, Beau, when Blue was 13 months old. The second was switching both dogs to a raw food diet a month or so later.  The switch was not motivated by Blue’s eating disorder, but rather by circumstances related to the pup, but Blue reaped just as many benefits.

Now at 19 months old, Blue is first to eat at mealtimes. While he doesn’t exactly eat out of the metal bowl, he will drag out the morsel he is interested in and chomp his way through it, bones and all. He is selective about the cuts he prefers, will eat his fill and walk away leaving whatever is left for Beau to clean up. Before Beau turned up on the scene, Blue would never take a chew or a biscuit , now he jealously guards any he is given, burying them under his beanbag if necessary to keep them from the marauding Beau or taking them to a quiet corner to chomp in peace. 

What brought about such a change?

I can only speculate. Perhaps it was the competition from a younger totally uninhibited dog, perhaps some latent primal instinct kicked in stimulating the physiological imperative to override the psychological, perhaps he just likes the taste of raw meat better, or maybe the associations have changed to such a degree that he now experiences pleasure from food rather than anything else.

Blue still spits our treats when he is in stressful situations, and I use this brilliant indicator to help me understand what the stressors are so I can work to alleviate the situation for next time.

Since coming to us a year ago, Blue has put on three and half kilograms and weighs in now at a very respectable 8.5 kg - nearly all of that has happened in the last six months. The new associations he has made with food have accelerated his training in other areas as I can now use food to help him overcome other fears and learn new skills and behaviors. 

Blue may never totally overcome all of the phobias he developed as a result of events in his past, but his overcoming this one inspires hope for the others. With patience, good timing and lashings of positive reinforcement (R+), this little dog will tackle anything.