Hi everyone As Daisy is getting taller it’s becoming a bit of an issue her jumping up to try and get what’s on the kitchen worktop. We don’t leave any food out so most of the time she doesn’t do it but if we’re cooking on the hob she tries jumping up to reach. Its only take going her to grow a tiny bit taller before she knocks a saucepan off and causes an awful accident so this needs to be stopped. Just wondering how you go about training a dog not to do this, I reward her for sitting/laying calmly in the kitchen but what else can I do?
Hi @Jordan Maides Good practice on clearing benches. Prevention will extinguish the behaviour. Put saucepan handles over stove rather hanging proud of your stove. You can teach a dog to go to mat/place. I would put the mat out of the kictchen but in sight so you can monitor her behaviour. Increasing distance reduces the distraction. When you are cooking give the cue "mat". Positively reinforce desirable behavior after you give her the releas cue, and she gets off the mat.
Our approach was a little different in that we have gated off the kitchen, but Chewie can sit on the other side of the gate and watch us. I used to have a treat pouch next to me while I cooked and I would toss him treats for a quiet sit or down. I knew he would be supervising me in the kitchen anyway, so might as well reward good behaviour!
Very difficult for me as well with my 19 week old. She does “off” great but that doesn’t discourage her much from propping herself up in the first place. I decided not to reward her after dropping down because I was afraid this would just encourage her to think of it as a game where she would want to jump up in the first place. Now I sometimes treat her for just sitting nicely at a distance, but I can’t believe it’s clear she understands it’s specifically for not jumping/begging. Sometimes if she jumps up more than once instead of “off” I just pick her up and gate her off in the adjoining room.
Hi @Henry77 If you never reward a cue, then the dog will not be motivated to comply. You have to occasionally reward her. If you notice she gets up and then gets down and looks in your direction then you know she is chaining the two behaviours together and anticipating a reward. In that case there should be no reward because you did not give her any cue. If she instead gets up, and has been there for a few seconds and you tell her to get down, then you are not necessarily teaching her a complex behsviour. When we teach complex behaviours there is a rapid succession of cues. Over time the first cue results in the chain of behaviours. If there are gaps between the cues, then the dog will not form a complex behaviour.
My dog likes to table surf as well. I’m going to work on this more than I have been because we have just been telling him off with out really rewarding. I did down/stays today while we ate and treated him for staying down and he did well. Any other recommendations to stop the behavior?
Hi @Bud Light/Dilly Dilly I take it that "off" is your cue for get down from the bench rather than a ticking off or some harangue. The dog will not understand the latter two. It's better to just tell the dog what you would like her to do. I think place/mat is a better exercise because one does not normally teach stay as part of that exercise. It means go there until I give you a release word. If one is teaching duration without any stay cue, then there is no fundamental difference, except for the important point that Mat specifies a location.
Lol yes. That was not worded very well. We have been just saying “off” as a queue. We don’t actually “tell him off” haha And alright. I will work on that!
I think really dogs and kitchens are not meant to be combined(!). I really recommend getting a stair gate and putting it on the kitchen. You can get some quite nice wooden ones these days if you think they look nasty. Our kitchen is a dog-free zone. They come in, get food, do training in there and then they are out of there immediately. The baby puppies 'live in the kitchen, crated under the table, but they are out of there by the time they are 4-5 months and before they can teach themselves anything like this. The problem is: It takes almost nothing to reinforce a dog. You may think you're not leaving food out, but even a few crumbs is a tasty reward - even licking some dried spilled stuff, is reinforcing! And then the dog will do it even more because it has been reinforced. You can reinforce her for lying quietly, or crate her - but really the simplest thing is that the kitchen is dog-free - at least when dogs are not having to be in there for their own meal etc...
@Michael A Brooks , Just to be clear, I do reward “off” when she gets off other ledges like the couch, for example. She’s complied virtually 100% with “off” since learning it. I’m just trying to distinguish between things she can sometimes jump up on and things I want her never to jump up on. When she does “off” from the kitchen table, and then if she follows that up with lying down calmly at a distance for a while, I will get up and treat her for that.
Hi @Henry77 I was responding to your understandable fear that you could be inadvertently teaching a complex behaviour--that your dog would get up in order to get a treat for getting cued off. It is highly unlikely provided you leave a gap in time between the behaviours. And if did happen you would not reward it. For example, in obedience recall the dog must first sit directly in front of the handler. The dog is then cued to sit next to the handler's left leg. I'm not saying it can't happen but I have never seen a dog go directly to the handler's left side, even though the dog knows she may receive a treat at the final position. The sit before the handler and final position are always taught with a pause. I don't know the design of your kitchen. But if there is a section without any kitchen benchtops, then you can teach your dog boundaries--that the section with the benches is an area she is not permitted to enter. Jo and some other owners here like to use gates to just block off our furry friends. But I sense you like a challenge. So teaching boundaries is one way to go.
Pffft! Is it likely she will be in the kitchen with a boiling sauce pan without you being there? Both my dogs are Olympic kitchen counter surfers - I just don't care. I don't leave anything in reach that could either reward them or harm them (there was that time my Dad left his chicken mayo lunch sandwiches within reach though.... ). They very, very rarely get inadvertently reinforced for counter surfing, but they'll always give it a go. And they LOVE standing up on the counter to observe their walk/training treats getting chopped up. It's a lovely little routine for us. I say don't sweat it. Don't leave them alone with dangerous stuff, and wipe your counters down before preparing food. Easy peasy.
@Michael A Brooks , Thanks. Not to co-opt the thread with my experiences, but maybe they are helpful for others to read. My kitchen is pretty centrally located, so keeping her out entirely isn’t really an option. Further, I don’t want to gate off no-go rooms at all, but that’s my preference. I find my dog knows well never to bother when sitting down and eating. The behavior mainly arises when something’s just sitting on the table and no one is paying attention to her. She’s stolen a couple napkins, but never food. She has never gotten food from the table or from anyone sitting at the table while eating. I will get up, walk over, and then treat if I choose, but only sometimes. I think she’s getting it. As far as heel as a complex behavior goes, I finally got her to get it wonderfully after much trying. She had the walking heel down but I was struggling to have her come from a distance in front of me, walk behind me on my right, and then sit at my left. The big breakthrough that worked for me was doing “touch” on my right to guide her around my back. I was soon able to drop the “touch” command and holding my right hand out completely. Refining the exact stop position and sitting finish also came easily after that. Now she defaults to that left-side position all the time and not just when I say “heel.” And when I do say “heel,” she runs around my right and back and sits at my left like clockwork. Just wanted to share how I got it to work.
If dogs are allowed unsupervised access to kitchens, it can go in some very undesirable directions... When we collected one of our puppies from a less-than-reputable breeder, our puppy's father came into the kitchen with us, launched himself onto the kitchen counter, reached upwards and took a pat of butter off a high shelf above his head - then was out the door with it - all before anyone could say a thing. It was clearly something he had done before... The butter was completely out of reach and in a cupboard above human head height. You only have to watch some of the videos that cycle around FB showing the ends dogs go to, in the kitchen, to get a few crumbs whilst their owners are out... Some dogs really are opportunists. Oh and - his daughter inherited this trait - but it's been managed through her just never being in the kitchen. (Unless eating.)
Or it can be completely fine and largely uneventful bar the occasional swipe of chicken mayo sandwiches.
Chicken mayo sandwiches are quite reinforcing, though. And learning theory tells us that this would result in dogs trying even harder to steal food in the kitchen...
Our dogs have the run of the house, including the kitchen. Tilly counter surfs, so we keep the counters pretty much clear of food. She is old and arthritic, but can still snag things if we forget. Fortunately Cooper doesn't counter surf. If she did we would be in trouble, because she is so tall that she can see the edge of the counter while she still has "four on the floor"
The one in the middle is an opportunistic counter surfer. His name is Jack. Imagine the reaction when I said his name and “OFF.” My kitchen is open so we had a hard time but he rarely does it now. It’s tough because the payoff is huge for them. I can put liver on both his paws and he won’t touch it until I release him. Go figure.
