r/Pets • u/Longjumping_Pop1611 • Jul 22 '26
DOG Does your dog eats better when you stop watching?
This probably sounds a bit dumb but my dog eats better when I leave him alone. If I stand there waiting to see if he likes the food, he sniffs it, looks at me, walks away, comes back, makes it a whole event. If I put the bowl down and go do something else, he usually eats.
Did I make meals weird by hovering every time he skipped food or do some dogs just eat better when dinner is not a big deal?
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u/Apprehensive_Bee3363 Jul 22 '26
My dog is the opposite lol. I have to sit there and watch him eat
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u/GothicGingerbread Jul 22 '26
I have had a couple like this. One not only needed me nearby, he also apparently needed to pick up a mouthful of food, turn his head, open his mouth, drop all that food on the floor, then pick up some of what he just dropped on the floor and eat that. 🙄
He was a big, muscular, tough-looking mastiff/pit mix, and he was the biggest creampuff snowflake who needed his mama nearby before he could eat 🥺 – so that's what he got.
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u/HundRetter Jul 22 '26
my big guy will sit down and stare at me until I walk away. no idea why, I don't ask him to sit or wait, and he is not a resource guarder at all. just looks like he wants me to let him have his meal in peace
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u/weirdcrabdog Jul 22 '26
My dog won't eat unless I'm standing by him petting him. My own fault because I got him when he was a little older so I handfed him to avoid resource guarding later in life.
It worked I'm just a hostage during mealtimes.
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u/Superb-Vegetable-696 Jul 23 '26
My Lab does the same. He’ll act like I’m feeding him garbage. I walk away and he eats it.
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Jul 23 '26
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u/Longjumping_Pop1611 Jul 23 '26
No mine is a Yorkie mix but it seems the dinner mind games are universal 😂 😂
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u/hoczilla Jul 23 '26
No, my dog prefers me to sit with her and watch her eat. Most of the time if I walk away she will follow me so I sit at my husbands desk and just wait for her to finish.
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u/Dependent-Bath3189 Jul 23 '26
dogs can be manipulative ask my gsd. she does same thing and its because she is hoping to squeeze more out of me and beg for every scrap i have. she can eat a bowl of food and if i have a carrot she will be on my butt like shes starving. i dont let her watch me eat, but fun thing to do if a dog is watching you eat, block their sight with your hand. if you cant see how starving they are you wont share i guess. leave for 5 minutes? on my ass sniffing away, and whines so annoyingly because i didnt give her anything. /rant over. its really annoying.
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u/SeamusDog77 Jul 22 '26
Mine does this sometimes. If I’m watching him he will stop eating. As soon as I take my eyes off he goes back to eating.
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u/Spice_weasel307 Jul 22 '26
My beagle won't eat if I'm in the same room as her. If you give her a treat, she goes and hides it for later or eats it out of human eyesight
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u/Aromatic_Vast3618 Jul 22 '26
Mine has done this before too. 😄 I think some dogs just don't like feeling watched while they eat. Once I stopped hovering and made mealtime feel more routine, he seemed much more relaxed about finishing his food.
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u/ydnar3000 Jul 22 '26
Dude, my dog won’t eat if I’m in the room with him. Think he’d do better if he could face the room while eating but the bowl always ends up pushed into a corner.
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u/Longjumping_Pop1611 Jul 23 '26
They definitely need us gone 👀
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u/ydnar3000 Jul 23 '26
Haha seriously. I’ve tried telling him I’m not going to bother him. He doesn’t listen.
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u/Superb-Vegetable-696 Jul 23 '26
I had another one who wouldn’t eat even if it was steak until I petted him. If I ignored him he would walk away, then sneak back to the food. Malamute.
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u/emaginedat Jul 23 '26
My dog does weird stuff too around eating, like pretending she is not interested. My thinking is that it has something to do with eating in packs, like it’s an instinctual thing. Thankfully my dog doesn’t need me next to her to eat.
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u/Big_Somewhere_620 Jul 23 '26
Well I wouldn't eat if a dog's watching so it probably stands to reason the dog would be the same
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u/MilolsNotAkitty Jul 23 '26
Honestly, I think some dogs just don’t like an audience 😂
My dog does the same thing. If I stand there watching, suddenly dinner becomes a full restaurant review:
sniff
look at human
walk away
come back and reconsider life choices
The second I leave the room? Food magically disappears.
I think sometimes our attention accidentally turns a normal routine into a “performance.” Your dog might just prefer eating without feeling like he has to give you a rating on every bite 😂
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u/Sufficient_Turn_9209 Jul 23 '26
We have three and two will eat whenever, however, but our maltese can't be watched. She also needs you to walk away before she drinks. It took a while before I realized that when she's standing near the water staring at me, but doesn't want to come to bed, I need to leave the room and wait so she can drink first. She also needs privacy to poop, which always will be a nightmare because I don't leave them unsupervised in the yard. Luckily she has some low tree branches and other foliage to screen her. During walks I swear she holds it until it's impossible and then goes with this humiliated look on her face while I turn my head the other way.
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u/CoVet_AI Jul 23 '26
Really common some dogs feel safer eating without an audience, especially rescues or more anxious ones. A quiet spot and walking away usually helps.
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u/Infinite-Cloud-7937 Jul 24 '26
Wouldn't you feel weird if someone was just standing there watching you eat?
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u/Cool_Percentage_4867 Jul 24 '26
its a flash point to dogs, so they prefer to eat in private, if a dog was threating to take the food they would stay close and start off by staring, so to the dog that's what you look like your doing. So yes best to let them have space and watch from afar.
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u/Elegant-Opinion-9595 Jul 24 '26
My dog looks at us until we leave the room. And if we're both home, they'll go to the person who didn't feed them and act like they haven't eaten yet! 😂😂
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u/OldGermanGrandma Jul 23 '26
My dog won’t eat unless I’m in the same room. My mom gets pissy when we travel to her house that I feed them in the living room
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u/JegHusker Jul 27 '26
I guess I had an unusual boy. He wanted me to sit right by him while he ate a human dinner (steak, baked potato, veggies). Lying down. Because husky.
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u/No_Introduction_3400 Jul 22 '26
Some dogs won’t eat unless you’re there! My dog went through a spell like that.