Why begging is the most honest behaviour your dog owns
A dog begs at the table for one reason: begging has worked. Dogs are superb statisticians, and a strategy that pays out even occasionally, a chip from a child's hand, a crust from a grandparent, a scrap scraped into the bowl at washing-up time beside the table, is worth repeating at every meal. The staring, pawing, chin-resting and quiet whining are not manipulation or guilt-tripping; they are a behaviour on a very effective reward schedule, and intermittent rewards make behaviour more persistent, not less. This is also why begging often seems immune to telling off.
The rule, and why it has no exceptions
The fix is a single household law: food is never given from the table, from a plate, or during a human meal, by anybody, ever. If the dog is to have a piece of something suitable from your cooking, it goes into the dog's bowl, in the dog's place, after the meal is cleared, so the connection to the table is broken. Brief guests kindly and firmly, because one well-meaning visitor feeding the dog under the table can reset weeks of work, and give children a simple version they can actually follow, along with a job such as being the person who puts the dog's mat treat down. Expect an extinction burst: when a previously paid behaviour stops paying, dogs try it harder and louder for a few days before concluding the game has changed. Families that give in during the burst teach the dog that escalation works, so plan to start when you can see the burst through.
Give the dog a better job during meals
A dog expected to simply not beg, with nothing else to do while wonderful smells drift down, is being set a very hard test. Teach a settle on a mat placed where the dog can see the table but is not under anyone's chair, and build it up outside mealtimes first with treats for lying down and relaxing there. During meals, especially early in the retraining, send the dog to the mat with something of its own that lasts, such as a chew or a stuffed food toy prepared in advance. When the dog leaves the mat to resume its old post beside a chair, lead it back calmly every time, without commentary or eye-contact negotiations, and reward it once it is settled again.
Special cases: children, counters and second dogs
Toddlers in high chairs are a begging dog's dream, raining food at exactly dog height, so manage the geometry: position the dog's mat out of the drop zone, sweep up promptly, and never rely on telling a small child to guard their dinner. Counter-surfing during meal preparation is the same behaviour in a different place, and clear surfaces plus a mat station in the kitchen address it better than booby traps. In multi-dog households, give each dog its own mat at a distance from the others to prevent competition, guarding and one dog's restlessness infecting the group. If your dog's begging arrives with frantic, uninterruptible food obsession, scavenging on walks and weight change, mention it at your next veterinary visit, because a small number of medical conditions and some medicines drive genuine, abnormal hunger rather than habit.
What success looks like, and how long it takes
Most households see the intense begging fade within one to three weeks of a genuinely unbroken rule, replaced by a dog that takes itself to its mat when it smells cooking because that is where its own good things now happen. The mat habit, once built, is portable to pubs, cafes and relatives' houses, which is a large quality-of-life win from a small training investment. The entire project stands or falls on consistency between people, so put the rule where nobody can claim they forgot it: recording the no-feeding rule and the mat routine in KinsLe Care Teams lets you assign who prepares the dog's meal-time chew in KinsLe and keeps every feeder in the family working from the same page.