How to Stop Your Dog From Stealing Food and Counter Surfing

Does your puppy steal food or jump on the counter? Does your dog force you to hide food on the counter because they will jump up and eat whatever they find? If so, we are here to help!

Counter surfing is a trainer's way of describing dogs jumping on counters to steal things. Not only is this an inconvenience, this could be very dangerous for your dog. Luckily with the right training plan this is an easy fix.

If you want your dog to learn in the best possible way, you need to make sure you are taking a proactive approach. For us, that means having a foundation of good heel walks, obedience, and a well thought out training plan for all of their in-home behaviors. Often clients do not watch their dogs or they just simply try to correct them. Not only is this inefficient, but also unfair to their dog.

We get asked all the time why do dogs counter surf? The answer is simple, it is fun and they often do not know any better.

Pretty much every breed is prone to counter surfing, but there are some breeds who are more likely to try it. Any breeds that have a good nose, like hounds, are prone to counter surf and labs are notorious as well due to their insatiable appetites. Great Danes often struggle with this as well because they are much taller and can easily reach food on the counter.

As you can see in this video, making a ton of progress does go relatively quickly. We always recommend setting up this process with a leash on. Once a dog is doing well while you are in sight, there are a few ways to make it more difficult. The first one is take the leash off and practice having them control their impulses around food while off leash. However, do not rush that part of the process. From there we recommend slowly building up time out of sight time. You may need to consider using a mirror or a camera to keep an eye on them when you walk into the other room.

Once a dog has mastered this, we love to practice dropping food on the floor and expecting the dog to leave it alone. We use natural dog body language and show them that they can only have things that fall on the floor after we say so. You can get here very quickly with your dog, and overall it will make things safer if and when things fall on the ground.

Dogs do not grow naturally out of counter surfing, but they will stop doing it with the right training plan. If you notice your dog is doing it more and more typically this happens with age or they have simply learned that they can get away with stealing food. So just keep in mind as they get bigger and more strong willed that new behaviors will arise. Luckily with the right training plan this is an easy fix.

Some trainers recommend different devices, like a mini shock pad on top of the counters. We are not big fans of these. Its not that these will hurt a dog, but overall we should be training proactively and not relying on a tool to do everything for us.

We hope this video helps you with your new puppy. If you have any questions on counter surfing, or any other in-home behaviors, please drop a comment below. We would love to help you out.


Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:45 Proactive vs Reactive
02:13 Why Do Dogs Counter Surf?
03:45 What Breeds Are Prone To Counter Surfing
04:05 Advancing
05:18 How To Set Counter Surfing Up?
06:51 How To Make This Harder?
09:57 Dogs Learn Fast!
10:36 Will My Dog Grow Out Of This?
10:48 Why Is My Dog Doing This Out Of Nowhere?
11:37 What Devices Can We Use To Fix This?
12:11 Closing Thoughts

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