How to Stop Your Dog From Stealing Food and Counter Surfing
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 พ.ค. 2024
- Does your puppy steal food or jump on the counter? Does your dog force you to hide food on the counter because they will jump up and eat whatever they find? If so, we are here to help!
Counter surfing is a trainer's way of describing dogs jumping on counters to steal things. Not only is this an inconvenience, this could be very dangerous for your dog. Luckily with the right training plan this is an easy fix.
If you want your dog to learn in the best possible way, you need to make sure you are taking a proactive approach. For us, that means having a foundation of good heel walks, obedience, and a well thought out training plan for all of their in-home behaviors. Often clients do not watch their dogs or they just simply try to correct them. Not only is this inefficient, but also unfair to their dog.
We get asked all the time why do dogs counter surf? The answer is simple, it is fun and they often do not know any better.
Pretty much every breed is prone to counter surfing, but there are some breeds who are more likely to try it. Any breeds that have a good nose, like hounds, are prone to counter surf and labs are notorious as well due to their insatiable appetites. Great Danes often struggle with this as well because they are much taller and can easily reach food on the counter.
As you can see in this video, making a ton of progress does go relatively quickly. We always recommend setting up this process with a leash on. Once a dog is doing well while you are in sight, there are a few ways to make it more difficult. The first one is take the leash off and practice having them control their impulses around food while off leash. However, do not rush that part of the process. From there we recommend slowly building up time out of sight time. You may need to consider using a mirror or a camera to keep an eye on them when you walk into the other room.
Once a dog has mastered this, we love to practice dropping food on the floor and expecting the dog to leave it alone. We use natural dog body language and show them that they can only have things that fall on the floor after we say so. You can get here very quickly with your dog, and overall it will make things safer if and when things fall on the ground.
Dogs do not grow naturally out of counter surfing, but they will stop doing it with the right training plan. If you notice your dog is doing it more and more typically this happens with age or they have simply learned that they can get away with stealing food. So just keep in mind as they get bigger and more strong willed that new behaviors will arise. Luckily with the right training plan this is an easy fix.
Some trainers recommend different devices, like a mini shock pad on top of the counters. We are not big fans of these. Its not that these will hurt a dog, but overall we should be training proactively and not relying on a tool to do everything for us.
We hope this video helps you with your new puppy. If you have any questions on counter surfing, or any other in-home behaviors, please drop a comment below. We would love to help you out.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:45 Proactive vs Reactive
02:13 Why Do Dogs Counter Surf?
03:45 What Breeds Are Prone To Counter Surfing
04:05 Advancing
05:18 How To Set Counter Surfing Up?
06:51 How To Make This Harder?
09:57 Dogs Learn Fast!
10:36 Will My Dog Grow Out Of This?
10:48 Why Is My Dog Doing This Out Of Nowhere?
11:37 What Devices Can We Use To Fix This?
12:11 Closing Thoughts
#dogtraining #dogtrainer #puppytraining
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Well done! I'm a Trainer and have used other methods for counter surfing, but I think this is excellent and will start to use it. Thank you.
He is a 4yr old huskey. I have begun training him the way you showed and he is more attentive and following commands better...thank you. He will bite if he is sleeping and he thinks you are bothering him or if you try to get him into a crate or outside if he doesnt want to go.
Our dogs table surf. As soon as one of my kids get up from the table, the dogs will snatch their food. I've been so frustrated, I've been crating the dogs when we eat. Now that I know there is a way to fix this, I'm going to add this to our other training. Both are still young dogs, 1.5YO and 6mo.
Let us know what questions you have once you get started!
Same here 🤦♀️trying this today
Thank you for this clear concise training session will definitely try it with my berna sennen
I'm glad it was helpful! Good luck and have fun!
Thank you for the video. How often do you recommend we train with our dog?
@@conradocarrillo1920 I would work on this as much as you can. Working on it daily is ideal because then the issue can be fixed very quickly.
Spot on. Screw the "positive only" holier than thou people. Balanced training is where it's at. There need to be consequences for inappropriate behavior. Aggression, running away, and stealing food are not acceptable.
Totally agreed! Positive reinforcement to teach and reward good behavior and some sort of correction to lessen the bad behavior. Thanks for taking the time to drop a comment!
Looking for a German Shepard for a friend for our Golden Doodle.
We had a rash of poisoning, awhile back, in our neighbourhood, so I trained our dogs to ONLY eat from their dishes (inside the house), our hands, or when we 'okayed' it (vets, groomers, etc.) You could throw a steak into the backyard and the dogs wouldn't touch it ... unless they were starving!! No doubt it frustrated them, but it made us feel a lot better :)
Oh man Janis. I am sorry to hear that 😔.
Yeah, the community lost a few pets... cats included! Just shows how important training is :) :)@@SuburbanK9DogTraining
My dog is at the point where she knows she should not be on the counters/ desks so she waits till I am well clear of the room.
For example, dog is upstairs. I come upstairs with food, she then she will go downstairs to check the counters. Any advice on how to tackle this? She will jump onto the counter and walk around it just to check.
I would set up a camera in the kitchen and then create the situation when you are ready. Leave food on the counter, walk upstairs and watch the camera. If she jumps on the counter yell "no" and then go down and correct her. She will not understand the camera is what lets you see her and will start to assume she will always get caught. We do this with clients all the time and it works well!
my dog is food aggressive and counter surfs so once he gets something food or other things he doesn't want to give up, you can't get it back without a food bribe. he will bite if you try to take something he claims. what can I do?
Hey! We are filming an episode of our new podcast on Friday and one of the segments will be answering dog training questions. We could cover this one on the podcast. What breed is your dog and what age is it?
I have a 5 year old Aussie... And a 3 year old kid. The Aussie KNOWS she's not supposed to take food, because she only takes food when we are out of sight, and if I walk in while she's in the act she RUNS out of there, tail between her legs and hides because she knows I'll be mad. It's only gotten worse. I'm just at a total loss. We trained her since she was young, she doesn't take food or even show interest if me or my wife are around, she knows not to take food when it hits the floor and won't do that, she knows "wait" and "leave it" etc.... Extremely good dog otherwise, but this taking food off the counter thing has gotten ridiculous. I'm at. A loss man. I don't know how to change it. My toddler is going to put her half eaten sandwich on the counter, and I can't sit and watch her eat. I don't have the time. But it's almost daily now that my dog steals my 3 year olds food. For the time being, the dog is exiled outside.
Hey Dustin! We are filming an episode of our new podcast on Friday and I will get this added to the list for our Q&A session. We will get you a thorough answer on exactly how to address this.
I’d reverse the opportunity for success tactic. Start far and get closer
Are you saying you would start from farther away to give them a chance to make a mistake?
Would be great to direct camera on dog rather trainer to see what’s going on in the kitchen
Agreed! I think the camera person focused on the trainer because he was talking, but the camera could definitely have been flipped on that scene.
Tho video sucks, had to rewatch it 3 times to actually tell what you did
What should be different about the video?
If the dog was standing at counter eating. You come in kitchen, say "Down"! The dog turns to you, gives you whale eye and growls at you....then what?
We use the heel command as a calming technique when dogs are showing aggression. I would set the situation up while the dog is wearing a leash and when they growl I would heel them off and train until they are calm. What breed is the dog?
Put on leash before that. Then you can tug him down using the leash and will avoid getting bitten.