26/04/2022
🐾🌸 Counter Surfing 🌸🐾
This post combines a little bit of two thoughts: Counter Surfing and the importance of Behavior Management. In order to reduce/eliminate counter surfing, it’s important to be consistent in managing your dog’s environment to help reduce the behavior that you do not like to see.
What is counter surfing? Counter surfing is the word to describe a dog who may take food, or non food items, from counters or table tops. Most of the time we see counter surfing happen in the kitchen, but it can be ascribed to coffee tables and other surface areas! Most counter surfing happens when the guardian’s back is turned or if they’re out of the room/house. However, I have seen severe cases where a dog will just hop on up and grab the item that they’re seeking right in front of us!
We often see counter surfing as a ‘bad’ behavior from dogs who are out to steal our nightly meals! While this behavior is definitely unappealing and, for the safety of our dogs and harmony in our homes, should be addressed, we often fail to see the intelligence behind the obtrusive action! What we see is a disobedient dog (read also: owner who hasn’t given their dog an incompatible behavior) stealing everything in sight, but what we often fail to acknowledge is a dog that is displaying a cognitive function called cunning. Cunning is the skill in which an individual achieves a goal by deceit or evasion. For dogs, this could look like them doing nothing while you’re in sight of the item on the counter, but as you leave the room, the dog finds this as a great opportunity to take the item left behind. Cunning in dogs shows that some dogs are aware that they are being watched and will act accordingly. It’s not that they are trying to be disobedient or annoying, but if we really look at the individual situation, we are able to see exactly how smart our dogs are!
We have established that you have a little Einstein, but what now? Let’s manage and redirect their mental astuteness! For whatever reason, many people think that ‘training out’ counter surfing needs to be this huge production, but in reality what matters is management and teaching a behavior you would rather see; you may not even have to see your dog jump up once in order to correct the problem! After all, the less a behavior happens, the less likely it will occur in the future.
Some management techniques you could use are as follows:
🌸 Keeping your dog out of the kitchen. This could mean using a baby gate or training them to stay behind a specific threshold!
🐾 Keep your counters clean and free from food, or general items, that your dog may want to have. This requires you to put forth the effort in cleaning up after yourself!
🌸 Don’t feed your dog in the kitchen. This may seem silly, but keeping the eating in a different part of the house reduces the reasoning for your dog to be in the kitchen in the first place.
🐾 Don’t leave food on the coffee table even ‘just for a moment’! Take your plate with you or place it somewhere out of reach!
Management is not the end all be all for training! In most cases, you can phase management out once you have a better behavior established. However, we always encourage clients to not keep things on the counter, regardless of how well your dog does with that temptation!
So, what behaviors can we encourage or train that would be incompatible with counter surfing? Here are some ideas:
🌸 Teaching a leave it cue! You will need to build this cue up, but starting with a basic lesson is a great place to begin! Eventually, with practice, you will be able to place something down, say leave it, leave the room, come back and your item should still be in its spot!
🐾 Teach a reliable Place cue! Place is where your dog goes someplace, typically a mat of some sort, and stays for the duration of the time you need them there. This is a great way to include your dog in cooking activities, but also teach them not to be under foot, waiting for an opportunity to grab the goodies! While your dog is in place, you will be able to toss them their treats or maybe some of those fresh, dog friendly, veggies you’re chopping up! The goal is to establish that amazing and tasty things happen while they’re on that place mat and boring, or nothing, happens near the counters!
🌸 This step isn’t for everyone, but if your dog has a reliable leave it cue and you don’t mind them being next to you or the counter, teach them that sitting or laying politely next to you allows them to be where you are as long as they are not jumping on the counters. Again, this is more so for dogs who pace around counters rather than outright jumping up on them!
There you have it! This is by no means an exhaustive cure all approach, but should hopefully get you working on the right track! If you need help with your dog’s counter surfing, please feel free to shoot us a message and we will be happy to set up an evaluation to address the issue along side of you!
