Stopping Gargabe Collection & Countersurfing (no punishment allowed)

 Spiritdogs, I think you have a great point.  Prevention is always easier than fixing problem behaviors once they've started. Sasha never had the chance to counter surf when she was young.  She was supervised, or crated. 

And 4C, I appreciate the compliment but I can't agree.  Ivan (who was abnormally asocial) was a totally different dog, and had the same upbringing.  Dogs are like kids - some of their behavior is due to parenting, and a lot of it is due to who the dog or child is as an individual.  I think the goal with dogs and kids is to help them maximize their strengths, and learn ways to work with or around their weaknesses. 

Now, can anyone tell me how to get through to the cats? 

spiritdogs

But, in my experience, the dogs that are most reliable about not countersurfing are those that learned the lessons in puppyhood, or at the beginning of their association with their human, and not the ones that we try to deal with remedially.  Of course, it can be done, but once a dog has learned that the good stuff is up there, and he can reach it, it's much harder to convince him to stay away, especially once you are not in the room.

Experience?  So you have had the kind of dog of in your house that countersurfs?

I don't have dogs that countersurf nor have any of my new fosters countersurf.  My real experience from bringing many different types of breeds into my home, including hounds, is that countersurfing or garbage binging is rare.  I don't know the dog's background so maybe they were trained right as a puppy.....but I doubt it.  The only dog that binged on the open bag of dog food was Essie, an extremely emaciated dog.  I simply removed the bag and started working on satisfying her hunger need.   

Dog_ma

Now, can anyone tell me how to get through to the cats? 

 

 ACK! Cats are the worst!!! I can trust food on the counters with the dogs way more than I can with my two cats. They have NO bounderies, lol!

I'm seeing a trend here of "I'm satisfying my dogs needs and you're not".  I think that is a really unfair position.

With the first litter I had after I moved to MI I lived in a very old house.  The kitchen was spacious but not terribly functional.  The butlers pantry was where a lot of stuff "lived".  The banannas were in a basket on the china cabinet, the sweet potatoes in a basket that slides over a shelf and hangs......my adults were and are completely trustworthy, but those little pups, well, they were thieves and just LOVED to break into the pantry and steal the banannas and sweet taters.  Now this is not something one would expect pups to steal.  But, by golly they DID steal them and it required me managing the environment to put a stop to it.  It was not that their needs were not being met, but simply that they were mischevious little ones who had found something FUN and tasty to get in to.

Thunder is from that litter.  Today, I can get up from my desk and go into another room and leave my lunch there, and it will not be bothered.  It isn't that he still doesn't WANT to steal my food, I'm sure, but that he has been taught that if it isn't in his bowl it isn't HIS. 

I too have fosters through my doors all the time.  They are short term fosters so not dogs who quickly learn from my crew what is and isn't ok.  And they WILL counter surf if given the chance.  But to imply that they will counter surf because I am not meeting their needs is really unfair.

I go back to my original position.  The easiest way to prevent counter surfing or garbage raiding is to manage the environment from the get go.

Um, no.  None of my dogs are in the habit of countersurfing. Although, if I lose a sock, Maska might grab it and bring it to me hoping for a "trade".  When I say "in my experience", you must remember that I have had hundreds of students and their dogs...

Dogs don't always countersurf because of hunger.  They do it because their primary sense is smell, and if something up there smells interesting, they go investigate. Once they investigate, if the smelly thing is roast beef, they may try to get up there to grab a piece.  If they are rewarded by getting a piece, why would they stop trying to get up on the counter?  After all, last time they were there, they got beef.  That's usually how it starts.

Sometimes, puppies get a good start even without the owner noticing.  The counter is clean, puppy never smells anything enticing, so he doesn't bother.  It becomes a habit not to go near the counter.  After all, food comes in the bowl on the floor.
 

Jack the lab has been reading this thread with me, and he has made a request.  He is actually trying to become a professional counter surfer/garbage picker.  Sadly, our house is a poor training ground as things are generally picked up and he is watched closely around all food.  Therefore, Jack would like to go live in the houses of all those people who leave food on the counter for long periods of time (for him a long period of time for food to be untouched is roughly 2.7 seconds) so that he can improve his game.  Sort of like an idog national tour.  

Seriously though--"leave it" has always worked for Sally.  I always keep stuff of the counters and the garbage put up because are cats are the worst garbage pickers ever no matter how much they are fed.  Actually, I have seen the animals work together on counter surfing.  Sally generally does not touch stuff on the counter as she realizes that it is a no-no.  The cats don't give a hoot what I think of them being on the counter.  DH left a package of cheese out one day and Runt the cat got into it, nibbled on it, and eventually knocked in onto the food where Sally had been waiting to finish it off.....

 

Tonight, while I pattied up some buffalo burgers, Jaia watched me the whole time from his spot at my side (I was sitting down). As I was rolling and handling them, he watched my hands. Even when I put the burger down, he watched my hands. He knows that if he's getting any, it's going to come from my hands. And they have had raw buffalo before (last weekend) so they know the smell. 

At one point, B'asia came in and joined in the observation. I got the burgers all put together and had them on a plate on the table. I stood up and washed my hands and did a few things around the kitchen and then thought of this thread. I left the room for a few minutes. When I returned, I stood around the corner watching the dogs. Their heads can easily lie on the table (it's low). They could have reached the burgers without lifting their front legs. They smelled the burgers. B'asia walked around the table and smelled them from the other side. Yep, that's them all right... They stood there smelling for some time. Just to make sure, I guess. Then they went and lay down.

I just wanted to post in here as a bit of a brag, I guess. Sorry. I was proud, especially of B'asia since she's so young. Good doggies!

River learned to counter surf becasue it was rewarding.  It all started with butter - yes, we keep our butter out and on the counter (we like soft butter in our house).  When River was a maybe 7 months old he was a large dog and he was able to reach the counter and beyond.  His first expierence was getting to the butter, after that night he would check out the counters for things.  I wasn't as smart then as I am now, I never had a dog take things from the counter.  On another night, he got into a loft of bread -- humm..  who would have thought he would eat the bread, bag and all.

After that it was pot luck since we weren't use to putting everything away.  My daughter and my husband we especially lazy about being deligent.  He got into things like, a cup of bacon greese that was set back far on the stove, he likes sticking his head in the sink and licking the dirty dishes or at times if I leave my coffee on the counter he will lap it up (River loves coffee).  That was our problem originally we thought if we put on the hight counter or back far on the counter or stove he couldn't get it.  We learned quickly that he had the reach.  Now were good about keeping all things totally out of reach, the top of my refrig looks like mayham.  But he still checks out the counter ever chance he gets.  

He never when into the garbage until one day my pug decided to rip open a bag that was at the back door waiting to be brought to the garage.  Once River found out there were yummy things in the garbage that was the beginning of the garbage raiding.

I wish my River could be as good as your guys 4, that is wonderful - congratulations!!!

If I had buffalo burgers next to me River would watch intently.  If I left them and said, noooo...  leave it he would just stare at it until I disapeared then I know he would eat them.  If I stay in the room he won't.  And if my other dog came by me and him while I was rolling up those patties I am sure River would take to guarding them from her even thought they aren't his.

 

Cool! Funny, I was thinking of this thread today too. I was making chili in my slow cooker before we went to the game today, and I had browned some ground beef and chorizo and was draining it on a plate lined with paper towels on the counter next to the stove while I sauteed the onions, peppers, and garlic. The plate was about 3" from the edge of the counter, and the dogs were playing with each other nearby, totally ignoring it, not even sniffing the air. At one point they were rolling around right in the middle of the kitchen floor (I have a VERY small kitchen), and solely because of this thread I found myself noticing that they were showing NO interest whatsoever in the good smells going on just a few feet away, even when my back was turned while I was chopping veggies.

Of course they're not perfect, so when Dena got tired of playing and wandered off to lay down in the dining room, Keefer did come over to see what I was doing - he's my little shadow, virtually joined to me at the hip, so he was standing right next to me as usual. At that point he noticed the meat, and stretched his head up to sniff it. He didn't try to get at it, but if he could have licked it off the plate without breaking the "no paws" rule he probably would have tried if I weren't in the room. Of course if I weren't in the room he wouldn't be either, he'd be glued to my side or laying at my feet.

So there is absolutely zero "moral" or "lesson" to this story, just a different kind of counter-surfing story that I thought might amuse.

Conrad has never been a counter-surfer under the normal circumstances in which dogs counter-surf. But before we were able to get his separation anxiety under control, we had to keep everything cleared off not because he would eat it but because in his frenzy to see out of all the windows and attempt to escape through them, anything that was between him and the window would get demolished. He'd climb up on anything that was in front of a window in order to see out and in the process knock whatever was on it off. He was also an occasional garbage dog too but that was also more of an anxiety thing--he'd shred anything he could get his claws on to relieve his stress, and that included the garbage. But that's not what this story is about.

This story is about the day that Conrad flooded our house. 

One day I came home from school, opened the door and Conrad literally came FLYING out the door into the front yard the second I opened it. That was a little odd because normally he'd be happy to go out when I came home but not to the point of nearly bowling me over in the process. He was even more agitated than normal, if that is even possible, and stood out in the yard looking back into the house with great trepidation. So I took a peek into the house to see what he was so worried about.

My entire kitchen and part of my living room were flooded in about an inch of water. The kitchen sink was turned on and there was a dirty dish blocking the drain. The water had overflowed out of the sink and on to the floor. Conrad had turned the sink on in the middle of his gyrations, because we had one of those taps that you pull up on the bar to turn the water on, and push down to turn it off.

I waded in and turned the water off and immediately just packed Conrad up in the car and drove down the road to the high school where DH worked, pulled him out of his after-school program (he was drama club director) and told him he had to come home with me immediately because our dog flooded our house. Yowza. It was quite a thing cleaning that up, and our living room was carpeted. We wound up renting one of those steam cleaners from the supermarket, and not putting any water in it, just letting it suck up the water that was already permeating the carpet.

That dog caused some serious mayhem before we wised up and crate-trained him.

Incidentally last night I left a big bowl of stinky lamb dog treats on the counter all night and there was no counter-raiding. However I did catch Marlowe snatching a peanut off the top of the dish of mixed nuts I set out on the coffee table last night when my parents came over for dinner. He looked around before he did it too and I think was just like...huh, they put these right in front of me and they smell like something I get all the time...let me just sample one and see what happens. He got sent to his mat after I caught him.

*giggles* Somehow Marlowe reminds me of Jill. Penny grazes under the table for possible food scraps, but Jill has been led to believe by Pyry that all the browsing is for paper and cardboard. Pyry likes to chew up cardboard boxes that had food in them once, and when Jill comes wanting what he's got, he gives her the tiniest shred of paper off the box and she thinks that's what all the fuss is about and plays with it until it's so soggy she ends up eating it. Likewise, Pyry has led her to believe that apple seeds are the best bit of apple cores, and Penny has led her to believe that cicadas are tasty treats despite the weird, crunchiness. Jill is gullible and not very food driven. My mother's manx cat, Nessa, broke into a bag of raisin bread and chewed the corners off every single piece. Bread in her kitchen lives in a bread box, now, for the first time in more than 25 years!