Traveling surfers - do you leave your dog in the car? Are you worried about someone bugging them or worrying about them in the car?
We have a great four month old lab puppy. Eager to learn and happy to please. He is crate trained and decent on a leash indoors.
The only issue we have (today, lol) is counter surfing. The traditional solutions are to keep the dog out of the kitchen or to keep him on a leash at all times inside.
I’m failing at both because of our floor plan and a toddler that requires me to constantly bring the leashed dog into the kitchen (where the toddler then offers food that the dog jumps for).
Crating is an obvious answer and we even have a crate in the kitchen for this purpose. But, it’s just impractical to constantly put her in the crate anytime something tempting is out (which is always because of the baby). Plus, because of our floor plan, the puppy passes the counters constantly.
Other than waiting for maturity and crating her, are there other things I can try to train her out of the behavior? Because she is so great at everything else, I really feel like she would stop if I could figure out a better training plan for this behavior. This seems like a me, not her, problem.
Our dog will counter surf any chance he gets. To try and train him not to do so we usually have him sniff said food item and then send him to his kennel. Say “no”, “bad boy”, etc. Lately he has been eating the food and then putting himself in his kennel. What do we do! He is a trash eater as well. 😣
One of my roommates likes to make large elaborate meals (and to be fair to him he's a great cook). But it takes him a while to clean up after himself (like a day). The problem is that I have a dog that I just adopted a few months ago (with the whole house's approval and excitement). Since it's my dog, I do all the training, exercising, and management of the dog (which I love - I'm a dog person). I spend hours a day training and exercising him and am fairly adamant about training so that I can ensure that he learns to be a good canine citizen.
I'm really careful to clean up the kitchen / common areas to make sure there's no food laying around whenever I'm leaving the dog alone so that he doesn't learn to snatch food and other things off of the counters. However, my roommate isn't so careful. I have a webcam pointed at the kitchen/living room so I can check up on the dog during the day while I'm at work and I've seen the dog go up onto the counter and get food a few times. Also last week, I wasn't home and my roommate made a big meal then went outside to eat it with his girlfriend, leaving my dog alone in the house with the uncleaned mess. I happened to come home while they were outside and saw that there was a big mess and my dog alone with all of the food on the counter. I reminded him to please clean up if he was going to leave the dog alone, and he was kind of like "I just made it I just want to eat the meal with my girlfriend" and I was like "yeah I get it I just don't want the dog to get food off the counters". Similar situations have happened multiple times where I've had to remind him to clean up before leaving the dog alone.
So am I being unreasonable? I end up cleaning the kitchen all the time after him to get rid of the counter food. Is that just my cross to bear as the dog owner? I feel like it's not crazy to ask someone to clean up after themselves, but I understand that the dog adds an additional factor. I don't mind if he leaves them out for hours, as long as he is still in the kitchen/living room, since the dog won't counter-surf unless no one else is in the room. Thoughts?
