In experimental settings mining the same four elements of dog, experimenter, food, and knowledge, dogs seem to distinguish between humans who might be helpful to them and humans who will likely not. When a person with a sandwich is either blindfolded or facing away, dogs suppress the urge to stay as close as possible to the sandwich. Instead, if there is a nonblindfolded person nearby, they go beg to him instead. Let this be a lesson that begging at the table is probably encouraged by your eye contact toward the dog—even just long enough to tell him no begging! Alternately, set up one person
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