Anyone been successful in getting their dog to stop countersurfing? Jellydog patrols the kitchen counters and dining room table like she’s making 90K a year plus stock options to do so, and will snarf down anything her prehensile tongue will reach. I know we could keep the counters free from foodstuffs at all times, and usually we do, but occasionally you have to turn your back on the bread you just put on the table for 30 friggin’ seconds to run in and get the entrees – GONE. Ugh. Sometimes we put her on a tiedown but then she emits earsplitting high pitched barks throughout dinner - not pleasant.
Method must be kind, more or less. A mention of the collar discussed in [thread=353544] this thread[/thread] got me glared at like I was Josef Mengele.
Well, there’s nothing unkind about a prong collar used correctly, but I don’t see how it’d do much good to correct your situation, since your dog is obviously doing this when you’re not right there to see or correct it…and the prong collar isn’t an “indoor” collar at any rate.
You could crate the dog when you’re serving dinner, or isolate her/him in a seperate room during food serving.
A possible better long-term solution to try and break her/him of the habit would be to “booby-trap” the area you’re trying to protect. Put some pennies in a couple wobbly-ish containers (metal containers by preference since you want it to be loud when it falls), and set them right at the edge of the table where the food is.
When the dog reaches up to try and snatch the food, he’ll upset the containers, and the noise the containers-with-pennies makes when they fall will either startle him enough to scare him off, or at the very least alert you a food theft is in progress, at which point you can run out and correct him.
Alternatively, set him up. Put food on the table, leave the room, but take up station peeking around a corner, watching for him to try and snatch food. Soon as he goes for it, jump around the corner and yell NO! in a loud, firm voice (you can also add a shake of the aforementioned tin-can-with-pennies-inside for added emphasis). Rinse and repeat till he gets the message, or at least thinks you’ve got eyes in the back of your head.
Another good booby-trap to train a dog to keep off the counter are several mouse traps, set, but laid upside down. When the dog hits them, the dog doesn’t get hurt, the trap simply makes a loud snap and flips into the air.
She eats paper with gusto and thinks cat poo is pate, so it’s hard to think of something that would be unpleasant-tasting enough, short of, I don’t know, battery acid.
Thanks for all the suggestions! Tricks may be the way to go - I’m afraid she’s a dog of very little brain.
