Do you want to stop your dog from counter surfing? Does your dog jump all over your counters? Do you have to put your food all the way back? If so, we have some tips you can work on with your dog!
Teaching your dog to not “counter surf” does not only provide more control in the house, but it can keep your dog safe! Thousands of dogs each and every year die or require expensive surgeries when they ingest something they should not have!
Just like any behavior, we recommend teaching your dog the basics to get a decent foundation of training under their belts. You should not simply try to just correct or praise away a behavior. We recommend starting and establish a solid heel walk, then work on your dog’s obedience. Once they have a better understanding of these two skills, you will have a well mannered dog that is more tired, calmer, and respects you more!
To start this process, you need to start with a leash and collar on. This gives you more control, and allows you to stop your dog sooner if they try to jump on the counter. Just like everything else, we will eventually work away from having to use a leash and collar, and the end goal is your dog to be fully off leash when it comes to all of their behaviors.
If your dog goes to jump on the counter, we flag this with a verbal “no” and give them a correction on the leash and collar. How stern we are with our verbal no and the correction depends on your dog's demeanor and level of training! With some dogs, a soft no and a tug is enough, but other dogs require us to be more strict. To perform our correction, after we give our verbal no, we will apply a quick tug up on the leash and collar. We want to make sure we see a change in mindset, if we do not, either repeat the correction or heel your dog away to calm them down.
Keep in mind, we are not saying dogs can not have human food. We just want to make sure your dog knows that not everything is theirs!
Besides eventually removing the leash, a good way to advance this process is trying lower surfaces like a coffee table. Mistakes are ok, but you should supervise your dog when you are in the beginning stages. We will eventually start trusting our dog out of the room, but there is no rush with this process.
We recommend using things such as their food, snacks, lunch meat or cheese when practicing this! One reason of course is if they eat it they will not get sick. If you start with a higher value item, we want to make sure you do not become sad when they beat you to it!
If you have a dog that counter surfs or is showing other naughty behaviors, please comment below! We would love to help you with your dog’s issues!
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