We just adopted a gorgeous doggie! who is sweet and mellow and wonderful in many ways. But over the weekend, we noticed a harmless, but annoying behavior:
She steals shoes. Sandals, sneakers, flip-flops, slippers, you name it, she steals it. She doesn’t chew them, she just moves them. Usually into my step-daughter’s room, often she will lay on them.
While it is a minor thing, when she wants to “go walkies,” and when I need to leave for work, shoes are kind of a necessity. Most of the shoes we have are off the ground in a hanging shoe rack, but she still gets them. And as my wife is ill and has limited movement, we can’t put them much higher than they already are.
Does anyone have any idea what this is all about and how we can break her of this habit? Or what it’s called so I can research more?
cayanne pepper liberally sprinkled on the shoes? My kitten had this very cute habit of chewing on my butttons but I became worried she would actually get one off and choke. So I reluctantly dosed one with cayanne pepper, she just did it once and never again.
I don’t know if this will cause howls of indignation from animal lover types, but I can assure you I thought it was best for her health.
While I do like the suggestion, we’re going more for the “find out why she’s doing it” angle, so we can adjust her environment/behavior, rather than just a “stop what she’s doing” which can often remanifest itself. If all else fails, though, we’ll try it.
My Dolly does this. We’re pretty sure it’s an attention thing.
She brings shoes to people when they come in the door, which causes people to say “OMG your doggy has a shoe. Don’t eat the shoe doggy!” and she gets lots of attention.
When we’re at home and no one is paying attention to her, she’ll wander to the bedroom and go in the hamper and bring out some dirty undies, then come back and lay in the middle of the living room floor with the undies. This usually causes big reactions from me and my guests, and she is satisfied.
So, I would suggest hiding the shoes away in a closet or a bench/stool/box where your wife can still get to them but the dog can’t. (My dog can get into things with lids (like the hamper) so you might need something with a latch) You can also make sure there’s always a toy or a pair of shoes you don’t need there for the pup to grab instead.
Whatever the dog is grabbing is getting it a lot of attention, so just make sure she can only grab stuff that doesn’t cause attention.
ETA: If you can’t move the shoes to where the dog can’t get them, you might just need to teach her to retrieve the shoes she’s taken in order to satisfy her attention needs.
Maybe she likes the shoe’s scent? Do you have some old shoes that she can have?
I would do both, buy her a toy like a Kong that you can put some food in. If this doesn’t work provide her shoe’s which you don’t wear anymore. Then when you find her with inappropriate shoes you can replace the good shoe with an old one, or the toy.
The main thing with the old shoe is to make her realize that the older shoe is OK and the newer ones are not.
WAG:
They smell like you and your family, which she finds comforting to “den” with. Buy yourself some new pillows, and give her your old ones (that smell like you) for her bed.
Our PJ doesn’t steal shoes any more, but she will use them for pillows if they are left out on the floor.
I think this is it. People are very visual creatures; dogs are always sniffing. I read an analogy once saying that if you compared a person’s sense of smell to a dog’s, ours is so poor that it’s on the order of being legally blind. Dogs go for shoes because they lurrrrv you.
The first thing that came to mind for me was that perhaps she used to be given old shoes to play with. That is a bad idea since dogs don’t really “get” the old shoes being okay, but your brand new ones being off-limits.
