Counter Surfing & Food Stealing

"My dog jumped up and stole a whole steak off the counter!" 

"My dog is always grabbing food off the table!" 

“He’s constantly getting into the trash!”

These are comments I hear from frustrated dog owners on a regular basis. From the owner's perspective, their dog is being naughty, disobedient, perhaps even dominant. The dog "knows better." They get fed regularly - they're not hungry. They're intentionally misbehaving! 

A DOG’S PERSPECTIVE

Now let's look at it from a dog's perspective. Animals are hardwired to seek out food for survival. And like us, food brings joy. It's fun to eat really good food. How then, can one say that a dog who eats available, tasty food is "bad"? It's perfectly natural behavior for animals to seek out food and then eat it! It's how we all survive! Even if a dog always has a full bowl of dog kibble available at all times, it still makes sense that they would seek out and eat that aromatic steak sitting on the counter. That steak smells good! Of course they're not going to ignore calorie- and fat-laden food just because they have boring kibble available. It's a lot like how we can be full from dinner but still have room for dessert. 

It's also important to note that dogs are often very food driven, some more than others. This is genetic. Some dogs are simply genetically hardwired to want food - A LOT.  Dogs who are especially obsessed with food may have a mutation in their POMC gene that impacts appetite, causing them to feel hungry all the time. This gene mutation that essentially turns off the “I’m full” switch, is seen in approximately 25% of labradors and is often related to obesity. As an aside, one of my own dogs, a lab mix, has this genetic mutation, and his food obsession can be a challenge. He taught himself to open the fridge, so trust me, I get it!

(If you’re interested in checking your dog for this genetic mutation, Embark tests for it - I highly recommend it!)

Now that we can understand what drives a dog to scavenge for food on counters and tables and scarf down whatever they can reach, what do we do about it? 

The simplest answer: Stop leaving things out where the dog can reach them! 

Every time your dog jumps up on the counter and snags even a crumb of food, they're hugely rewarded, which means that behavior WILL be repeated, without doubt. Your dog simply cannot be rewarded with food, which means you simply cannot leave food out. This also means you may need to put your trash can away where the dog can’t reach it if going through the garbage is a problem.

Think of this like having a bird feeder in your yard. The birds know they can swing by the feeder and get food, and so they do. If you stop filling it they'll keep stopping by just to check - they won't just instantly stop coming. They'll periodically check in to see if there's food. This is what your dog is doing - periodically checking until there's food there again! 

If you punish your dog for counter-surfing or digging through the trash, they'll likely just get sneakier to make sure you don't catch them. A 2012 experiment showed that dogs steal significantly more food when it's dark versus when it's light (and the person in the experiment can see what the dog is doing). This suggests that dogs take into account the human’s visual access to the food while making their decision to steal it. They will try not to get caught. 

TRAINING

While you're in the kitchen, you can tell your dog to leave it, have them exit the kitchen while you prepare food, or have them go lie down on their bed or a rug while you prepare food. You can also just give your dog something else to do to keep them out of trouble - a tasty bone to chew on or their own dinner in a food toy might be helpful.

However, this will likely only be effective while you’re standing right there watching them. Even very well-trained dogs will have a difficult time leaving tasty food untouched with no one around to supervise.

Now, what you could do is a bunch of training, teach your dog a mistake marker and a punishment marker, and then set up an elaborate experiment where you leave food out, watch your dog on camera, and issue a mistake marker. If they continue rather than hopping off the counter, you would then give the dog a punishment. Now, this punishment could be as simple as a timeout or as elaborate as an e-collar. The problem with both of these, though, is that you still have to BE HOME. So while this may work for some dogs to learn that even if you’re in another room you can somehow still “see” them, the more confident dogs will figure out that if you’re truly gone and out of the house, they can help themselves. So while there is some training you can do, it has its limits.

So, instead of trying to change your dog’s genetically hardwired behavior, just change yours and put food away!