My dog decides to check out the fridge for a snack

Factual Questions
1

Okay, before I start, I’ll admit that this is my own fault.

My dog’s a Labrador retriever. Smart. His drive to retrieve is so strong, it’s scary.

One day, about a year ago, I’m bored. I decide to teach the dog to bring me a beer from the refrigerator. I tie a rag to the door handle and start training him.

It works. He goes to the kitchen, opens the fridge door, brings me a bottle of beer, goes back, and closes the door. Swear to god, it took me about 15 minutes to train him. (I don’t claim any special dog-training talent. It’s the dog. If it involves retrieving, he picks it up right away.)

No one believes me. Great party trick. Always a hit. I should have bet money against the doubters.

(Mods, the GQ is coming.)

I figure that I’m safe from dog-food-theft if I remove the rag. After all, dogs don’t have hands, and without the rag, there’s really nothing for him to grab with his teeth.

Fast-forward to this week. I’m putting in some long hours at work. Even though I do have a dog walker, the dog’s being left alone longer than he’s used to. Dinner’s been late. (Dog is confined to the kitchen during the day.)

Couple of days ago, I get home, the fridge door is open. Bag of hash browns (the kind you don’t freeze) is on the floor, near the dog-bed. Isn’t open, but has a tooth mark or two. Crosses my mind that he opened the foor, but conclude it’s impossible. I figure I left the door ajar. I decide to be more careful.

Tonight, the door’s open again. Same hashbrown bag is on the floor again, unopened. But a block of Stilton is gone, with shredded plasticwrap on the floor. No way of denying it now. My dog can open my fridge. Shit. (There’s no other practical place to confine him during the day.)

Here’s the question: Does anyone know if someone makes a child-safety lock that can be installed on a fridge door without drilling holes in it? Because I need one.

2

Check out google:

http://www.perfectlysafe.com/61207-fridgeguard.html

http://www.safechild.net/for_parents/childproofingproducts.html

http://www.safehouseco.com/c-viewitem.asp?prid=22&catid=3

O right, can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

3

Oh god, your dog has transmogrified into a teenager!

I can’t stop laughing. Some dogs are just smart. Maybe you should name him Golem: A labor-saving creation gone awry. :smiley:

[Jurassic Park]That dog is smart. Door-opening smart.[/Jurassic Park]

Depending on how tall the dog is and how the fridge door handle is set up, you might get good results by painting the bottom of the handle (where he’d likely grab it with his mouth) with something like bitter apple or hot sauce. Once he gets it into his head that the handle tastes really, really bad, he won’t want to open the door anymore. This will most likely break him of retreiving beer for you, but you can’t really have it both ways in my experience. (Most dogs aren’t that smart.)

4

Make sure he doesn’t watch you opening the safety lock or he’ll learn how to do it himself in no time… Happened to me.
Oh, except it was my son(2½), not a dog.

5

Mange, I wouldn’t put that level of sophistication past a dog like that.

6

Depends if there’s a key; in our case, it was a glass-fronted HiFi cabinet that we were trying to protect; we started out with a child-safety lock designed for freezers; it had two plastic prongs that you had to squeeze together to release the catch; after watching how we did it, David was able to open it himself.
We resorted to a metal hasp and staple (which I had to fix on with epoxy) and a small padlock; he watched intently and followed us to see where we put the key; at least a couple of times he managed to climb up onto the kitchen worktop and retrieve the key from the top of the microwave.
So we hid it, then one day I caught him trying to pick the lock with an opened-out paper clip (I don’t think he would have succeeded, but he was going to try) - I reckon this would be beyond the dexterity of a dog.

David is now 4 and we have given up locking the HiFi- he can just put his CDs on if he wants, but we have to hide the TV remote or he will reprogram the channels; we have a new PC in the house and I urgently need to get some parental controls installed, or I’ll walk in and find him buying toys online or something.

7

Or, you could put a kitchen chair in front of the fridge, until he forgets the “trick”. :slight_smile:

8

Mangetout, I think your kid has surpassed any dog.

In fact, you may well be raising the next Harry Houdini.

Well, that or a real-life Thomas Crown. :smiley:

(Seriously. Trying to pick a lock before you’re in kindergarten? He probably has above average spatial-physical intelligence. What kind of toys does he play with?)

9

Velcro.

They sell small rolls of it that come in tape form. Glue-sticky on one side and velcro-sticky on the other. Apply in such a manner to the top of the fridge door to keep it closed. I assume you are taller than the dog and that the dog can`t reach the top of the fridge and/or figure out how velcro works. I would make a strap that goes on the outside of the door,(do not just use it at a contact point along the inside of the door).

Dont forget, youll need one roll of the hook and one roll of the loop (velcro speak).

10

I had the same problem! When we lived in Germany! One day I turned around and there was a huige Newfoundland standing in my living room! If you are not familiar with the breed it is one of the giant dogs. His head was over three feet from the grouns and he weighed about 175 lbs! I freaked but he was very friendly. The dog owned the entire neighborhood. The door knobs in Germany are all the handle type so he would raise a big paw and push the handle down and push the door open with his nose. He would also do the same trick to open the fridge. I figured this out by losing all of my bacon (he’d take the package and all so he was rather sneaky) and finding long black hairs in the fridge (yuk) I solved the problem by installing a child lock - the kind you put on cabinet doors onto the fridge. He could still come in the house if the door wasn’t locked but i kind of got used to him and missed him when we moved!

11

construction sets; blocks, Lego, meccano (the plastic kind), cars, planes, etc - all the normal ‘boy’ stuff, but he does like to make things with odd bits of packaging and boxes etc too.

We are careful now not to let him get involved or watch some things (like operating the microwave, for example), because despite warnings to the contrary, he will try to do it himself once he has seen it done.

12

[hijack]
My mother found me picking a lock with my younger brother’s diaper pin when I was 2 or 3…
She says that was when she realized that raising the two of us wasn’t gonna be easy…:slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

I do feel I have well above average spaitial-physical-mechanical intelligence - I took apart my parents’ broken toaster when I was 6, figured out that the lifting spring (to ‘pop’ the toast out of the toaster when holding latch was released) was broken, stretched the remaining spring piece out a little further, reattached the spring and fixed the toaster - it wouldn’t pop the toast out quite as forcefully as it used to, but they continuted to use it for another 15-16 years until its unfortunate demise from a slightly tipsy grandfather and a 40 oz Beast at the ripe old age of 28.
[/hijack]

Back to the OP…If your refrigerator doesn’t have the heat exchanger coils exposed in the rear of the unit, I would just get a length of chain and a padlock.

Actually, even if you do have exposed coils, I would do the chain/padlock thing, just be careful about where the chain is in relation to the heat exchanger coils.

critter42

13

Sounds like an interesting kid. :slight_smile:

Anyway, I’d advocate breaking the dog of the behavior altogether with bitter apple or another foul-tasting agent. Why? Because with mechanical systems, you constantly have to worry about things like forgetting to correctly reclose the fridge and the eventual stress taking its toll on the materials and even the dog working out a way around your new tricks. And even if he can’t, he still wants to. The undesired trait is still there. The only sure way to make a lock secure is to make sure nobody wants to pick it.

14

I agree with the general point, but it’d be pretty hard to train this trait out. He doesn’t do it in front of me, so I can’t correct the behavior in the normal way.

I don’t even know how he does it. Could be he’s grabbing the handle with his teeth, or he could be forcing his nose or a paw into the gap between the door and the main part of the fridge. I’d have to douse the thing in bitter apple. I’ll give it a try, but he’s pretty tenacious when he wants to get/retrieve something.

15

This may be the el-cheapo way to go but can you just use packing tape and tape the door closed before you leave? Just one strip accross the top would surely work!

16

RM, thanks for the links.

17

Random, I understand you trained the dog by putting a towel on the handle, to give him something to tug?
Do you still use the towel, when you wish him to fetch something? Presumably you are removing it when you leave.
So you know the dog can open the fridge without the towel.
Get the dog to show you how… Remove the towel, set up a mirror or a camera in the kitchen, and ask the dog for a beer.
It will go into the kitchen, open the fridge, and fetch the beer for you. Unless it is VERY clever, it won’t catch on to the fact that you’re tricking it into showing you how it does it.

18

Every time I see a dog open and close a door, I shudder… creepy sh*t. Impressive, but creepy.

19

No kidding. This whole thread reminds me of Jurassic Park. “Are you sure the raptors can’t get out?” “Positive. Unless they’ve figured out how to work a door handle.” (Cut to raptor figuring out how to work a door handle.)

20

He’s most likely just scraping his paws against the bottom edge of the door until it pops open. I’ve seen do just that.

You could also just put something heavy in front of the door when you leave, like a 12-pack carton of cans. Just block him from being able to reach the bottom corner of the fridge door, and that should take care of your problem.