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by diN0bot 5771 days ago
i think what you're doing is great, so don't take my hypothesis the wrong way:

i have a dog and i live with 8 other people, so i have a bit of data on 8 different dog-human relationships. it boils dog to the dog treating everyone differently depending on who gives him food. P always give dog his sandwich crusts without asking anything in return, so when P walks in the door with a subway, dog goes grazy. in fact, P started giving more when dog wimpered, so for a little while dog whimpered until i made P not be such a sucker. A always lets dog lick his plates, so dog gets excited when A finishes eating. L requires dog to lie down in a neighboring room, so dog beg's from neighboring room when L eats. it's not love or care, it's simple causation and reward. dog constantly tries different tactics on those people who give him food. often, the amount of food escalates.

btw, dog goes crazy when the (human) dinner bell is rung.

edit: also, in restaurants, bribing before is a bit like tipping afterwards. the wait staff is constantly evaluating how much effort to expand on incoming parties (among other things) in order to maximize tips. in light of that, treatin an apparently wealthy couple well in hopes of a good tip isn't unreasonable. as for accepting bribes...depending on the place it's not that different from a tip except that it comes before not after the service (some places split tips with the whole staff, including say back waiters, etc, so then it might be immoral if the people keep the bribe for themselves. as for the immorallity of "jumping" the queue--for all i know, the wait staff does that anyway when they evaluate how much people can tip....)

1 comments

Can I just warn you that our dog always ate the scraps (and too much of them) and ended up with Diabetes. (Such a first world problem I know). Having to give her 2 insulin injections a day was not very fun (or cheap).
Maybe that says more about the food you are eating, and a warning to change your diet.
Not really, dogs have very different dietary needs to humans.
Especially when it comes to chocolate.
Could be. Although I think in this case it came down to calorie quantity and not quality.