Please Do Not Feed The Wild Animals!

Our family's newest edition, Cocoa, has been having some trouble with food. She seems to have been fed table scraps prior to her home here, and it appears that she was permitted to take food from the hands of humans - even if it required jumping! We have been struggling to teach her that we do not do things like that around here, but we are really having trouble. So, today my husband decided to see what would happen if she was given the opportunity to eat her fill. Most trainers and books do not recommend "free feeding" a dog with food aggression (she does bite kids and dogs that come too close to any edible thing she wants), but we are at our wit's end, and we are worried that she is just hungrier than we are aware.

So, while i was at the store, Cocoa was given the opportunity to eat until she walked away. Yeah, that went about how i thought it would. She inhaled the first cup, slowed a bit to gag over the second cup, threw up after the third cup, then came back and consumed half of a fourth cup - at which point, my husband gave the remaining half-cup to Oliver. She is now a bloated, obviously sick dog without much energy. But what she isn't is hungry! Still, though, she feels compelled to beg at the right hand of anyone with food.....

Hubby wants to keep trying since she so clearly got enough to eat and didn't feel well for overeating. We'll see how that goes!

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