Counter surfing

[Cynthia Shoe]

Any advice to break a pup of counter surfing? We give a firm "ah ah" or "off" and treats when he stops and has his booty on the floor, but he keeps jumping up and trying to pull things off the table and counters. We would love to break him of it before he is older, taller, and stronger!

[Debb, Lucy & Oscar]

I think I'd refrain from giving treats when he stops counter surfing. You might be inadvertently rewarding him for the behavior. A simple, 'good boy' should be sufficient. Lucy counter surfed something terrible when she was young. She was really brazen about it too, doing it right in front of us. We made a racket to get her to stop, which had limited results. I wish I'd known about The Pet Corrector back then (a can that emits a shrill noise that dogs hate, when depressed). I'm certain that would have been the answer for us. As it turned out, she grew out of it pretty quickly, so the behavior was short lived. Never had any counter surfing with Oscar. You could also try setting a booby trap with empty pop cans filled with some small rocks or coins (taping the openings shut) strung together attached to a cookie sheet with a 'bait' object also attached to the cookie sheet. The idea is to scare the bejesus out of them when they grab the bait. Good luck!

[Kaitlin and Ludo]

I have to say, I think there is something to this, though I can't say that I like the idea of scaring your dog into stopping a behavior-- that goes against the positive reinforcement training ideals that I like to follow. However, Ludo has a thing for dish towels and tried to jump up and grab one hanging off the edge of the counter.  We didn't set it up, obviously, but it was covered in pots and pans that were sitting out drying. When he pulled, everything came off with it and he went flying away from the scene of the crime as everything crashed and clattered on the ground.  Nothing hit him or anything, but he has not tried to get anything off the counter again.  I actually had to coax him back into the kitchen with treats and made lots of noisy pots and pans noises to get him used to it again.  But so far, no more surfing.

[Debb, Lucy & Oscar]

"Startling", might be a better term. I know, its all semantics, right? The idea behind setting up this type of situation is to eliminate yourself (in your dog's mind) as having anything to do with what happens. Their action causes an equal and opposite reaction, and yes, its unpleasant, startling and scary, but it changes the behavior, pretty effectively.

Like your Ludo and the counter surfing incident, I had something similar happen with Lucy when she was a pup. I have Cockatoos, 2 of them, both medium sized. I was worried about how Lucy and the birds might interact and I didn't want her to get too curious about them. I was worried for her, not the birds. They have can openers on the end of their faces! One evening I was cleaning their cages and the birds were out. Lucy came walking through and she did something to set the birds off, maybe it was just her walking in close proximity to them while out, but they took flight, fluttering and flapping their wings, SCREECHING as they flew. Lucy turned tail and burned rubber out of there! I knew from that moment that she would never do that again, walk casually through the room when the birds were out of their cages. For me, it was a happy accident. I never had to worry about her and the birds again. She's 6 now and she never walks through the bird's area while they're out of their cages without first getting my okay that its fine (her water dish is on the other side, so it happens pretty frequently). She waits outside the room until I tell her, "Go and get your drink." Its funny. She's not afraid of them, really. She goes right up to their cages when they're inside. But something about that incident happening when she was a puppy has really stuck with her on some level.

[Debb, Lucy & Oscar]

Yes, absolutely, keep the counters clean of food. With Lucy, it was always during dinner when she'd counter surf, when food was out and we'd be sitting just feet away. Now, its funny to watch the dogs when food is out on the counter during dinner. They don't jump but their noses go up just above counter level to sniff it out. They get a good whiff!

[Cynthia Shoe]

I guess I should mention that he is normally jumping up where there is no food on the counter or table, but he will pull anything off he can get him mouth on, hats, tissue boxes, mail, towels. :(