Our great Dane does this. If he doesn’t want a treat, he’ll go and put it by our small dogs’ kennels for them to have. He also won’t eat treats he likes unless the small dogs get one too.
And, oddly enough, he’s the only dog I’ve ever encountered that can free feed (great Danes are notoriously food motivated). But water, though. We have to chase him away from the bowl or he’ll sit there and drink the whole thing.
Between the thousands of years of semi-selective breeding and the parallel evolution that made our ancestors want the selective breeding to happen, the emotional compatibility between dogs and humans is amazing. They’re not humans of course, and we do well to remember that, but the connection is eerie, and when you see a dog display that kind of pack/family oriented behavior, it’s heartwarming.
let 👏 him 👏 drink
I can see you’ve never had to mop up a great Dane accident. They’re basically made of piss.
Weird. All of my dogs are free feed. While raising them, we always allowed access to a full bowl, and they’ve never wanted to eat the full thing since they know they’ll always have access.
We have a dogsitter when we are on trips. According to her, our heeler would politely take blueberries that were offered and then wander off, returning not long after. It was only later that she found a stash of uneaten blueberries on the couch. My little man was a desperately skinny and frightened stray in a kill shelter before he came to us, and on the theory that whatever makes him feel safe and content is better than the alternative, he’s, uhhh, put on weight. If he liked the blueberries, they would not be left on the couch.
The fact that he was a stray could explain that behavior. He may have had a bad experience with wild berries and didn’t want to get sick but also didn’t want you to feel bad.
