Welcome, Sue, Murphy and Bella ()*o*()

I saw that you were looking for counter surfing tips.  Ludo was a MAJOR counter-surfer for a while but it is nearly entirely stopped. He was doing it about 15-20 times a day and it was a HUGE source of frustration.  Have you heard of the training exercise "it's yer choice"?  It's all about teaching self control.  Once they have the basic exercise down, you can implement it pretty much everywhere.

For your first line of defense against counter surfing, you want to do two things (according to our private trainer):

1. This is the most important piece and you'll still do this when you implement the "it's yer choice".  You need to reward contradicting behavior.  Whenever they walk by the counter and maybe look or sniff but keeps all four feet on the ground, click and treat (or praise and treat).  They will learn that they get treats and praise for keeping all four on the floor but that they DON'T get treats when they go vertical.

2. Body blocking.  Our trainer suggested that any contact (verbal or physical) can be misconstrued as positive praise so she suggests body blocking and just moving into your dog's space when he goes vertical. Honestly, this didn't work for us, so we decided to implement it's yer choice.

3. My idea was to put a pile of treats on one of our barstools and to cover it when he moves towards it and treat when he backs away-- then move it to the counter, etc... Our trainer said the pile of treats weren't necessary.  If he goes vertical, cover the counter where he is and I usually say no.  I then send him to his bed.  If he goes vertical a second time (after going to his bed), he goes back to his bed for a 15-20 second stay.  If he does it a third time, he goes to his crate for time-out.

I used the clicker for the choice part and Ludo figured the game out FAST.  Our family room is attached to our kitchen and is kind of separated by the kitchen peninsula and that is where the bar stools are, so from our family room, if he goes to the bar stools but doesn't go vertical, he gets a click and a treat.  If they are like Ludo, they'll figure out that it's an easy way to get treats.  Ludo will walk over to the bar stools and turn around and look at me-- waiting for me to praise him... so your job will be to ease out treating for the easy ones for them to do (for Ludo, when he barely reaches the bar stools) and just verbally praise for those.  Then treat for the harder ones-- for Ludo, it's when he goes to the other side of the peninsula.. that's when he is most likely to go vertical.

We've seen a HUGE improvement in doing this.  He was probably doing it 15-20 times a day and we're down to MAYBE once every few weeks.  Fair warning though, it took a good 4-6 weeks to get it REALLY under control.

You mentioned that they do it when you're not around... our trainer said to set up Facetime or something and sit in the other room... if they "drive by" but don't go vertical, praise them from the other room and they'll come running.  If they go vertical, immediately go and correct.

I hope that helps and I hope they're both alright with the glass!  How scary!

I see that you are changing to FiproGuard by Sentry  so I looked it up.  Are you switching to Plus or Max?  What has your research shown you about it as opposed to Frontline Plus?

We have another thing in common, lol, before we moved to Florida, I was an ob-gyn nurse for 25 yrs...Do u come to florida at all now?  Would love to met you in person...Cheryl