Hello everyone, this is my first post on this site as I have just joined after getting my Golden Lab, Murphy. He is now 4 1/2 months old and we are getting on great . He's a lovely wee pup with a great temperament and LOTS of energy as I'm sure you can all relate to! Training is going well and we are making good progress but there's one area we are really struggling with and I hope someone can offer some advise... the kitchen! Murphy has recently decided to start jumping up so that his front paws are on the kitchen table or the kitchen surfaces... I never leave food out so this only happens when I or my husband are preparing food. He jumps up with he front paws and has a good sniff around until we move him off. He has never actually been successful in stealing any food but I want to put a stop to this asap. I have read a lot about exercises to stop a pup from jumping on people and wonder if the same rules apply. I.e. ignore him if he jumps on you, turn away and reward him with a treat and attention as soon as all 4 paws are on the ground. In this case, I read that you should NEVER shout at him or physically push him off as this is giving him attention and may even reward him for jumping up. Basically, I would just like a bit of advice on how to tackle him jumping up in the kitchen. Should I be pushing him down and shouting to let him know he's done wrong, or should I just working on rewarding him every time he doesn't jump up? Any help would be appreciated
Here is what worked for me. Note to Admins, this is a direct copy of the very same thing I posted on another Lab board I visit and it's a couple of other places too. Vinegar to Cure Counter Surfing Key first step, offer a bowl of vinegar to drink. If dog comes up sputtering and looks at you like you've lost your mind, continue. Some dogs will drink vinegar. A bit won't hurt them. If he/she drinks it happily this won't work I wiped down the counters and stove top after every meal and left it sort of wet. Vinegar has natural antibacterial properties and lots of people clean their counters with it even if they don't have a dog. I also left out two small plastic dishes of vinegar. Plastic in case he gets up and knocks them off, so they don't break. I did that for a week. Cured. I mean the dog. Oban relapsed about three months later and I did it for another couple of days. The odd wipe down with vinegar will help reinforce this. Worked for me. The big, big advantage of this is it works when you aren't there. And I can leave even food sitting on the edge of the counter but only for short times, it's not fair to tempt him.
Ok, Snowshoe, noted. Er....Did your dog drink the vinegar? Or did he smell something odd a mile off? Welcome LauraF ! If your dog never gets a reward for "counter surfing" he will stop doing it, eventually. If he is successful in ever swiping food, you are in trouble. I wouldn't shout at him (I never think this is a good idea), and make sure all food is pushed way back or put away (as you do now). Since he only does it when you are preparing food, you could have a mat in the kitchen, and train him to lie nicely on his mat when you are preparing food, and give him treats for doing that instead of jumping up on the counters.
Oban took a big slurp, made a face, spluttered and gave me a look of disbelief, "This is food? Mum, you're crazy." That's the point of course, for the dog to think what he smells up there is going to taste awful. I did keep my counters scrupulously clean for a long time but now I can leave the dinner plates with chicken dinner remnants on them till after dessert. Or I could till the kittens arrived. By the way, oil of peppermint on a cotton ball is keeping the kittens off my window screens and my dining room table. I have to squirt the cotton balls about every week to refresh them.
Hi and welcome to the forum. Agree with Juliet's comments. Train to sit/down on a mat or bed while you prepare food and reward for doing it. Good luck
Hi, Laura, and welcome to the forum. The thought of using vinegar like that doesn't sit well with me, so I wouldn't be trying that any time soon. I'm sure that it doesn't cause any harm, but it seems like it could potentially cause trust issues in a sensitive dog. I made the mistake with Willow of forgetting that puppies grow, so she did manage to self-reward a couple of times when she was young, and she will go and have a look now and again to see if there's anything there. The hardest part was training DH not to leave food in her reach! When I'm in the kitchen, I have trained my two to sit outside. It's not on cue; it's a default behaviour. They only ever get treated when they're sat outside the kitchen. No food is given to them inside the room. It takes time and patience, though. At first, I would treat like mad, every few seconds, then gradually built up the time between treats. We didn't have a lot of complicated meals at first Shadow (a year old) still gets overcome from time to time and bounces in to see what I'm doing. As soon as he crosses that threshold (it's open plan so no door or possibility of having a gate), I stop what I'm doing, push the board to the back, cross my arms and ignore him. He appears to be going through a teenage streak at the moment and impulse control is failing him a bit, so we've regressed in the last week or so. He does get the idea and will bounce out of the kitchen again - backwards, just like reversing a video. It's very funny.
Hmmm interesting thoughts above. I wouldn't be keen on offering vinegar. Bella counter surfs if there's food, so I just keep the tops completely clear of any food now (means my kitchen is super tidy ) and when preparing food she now knows to sit or lay down for a treat (all 4 paws on the floor), granted she's usually in the most awkward place by the cooker or fridge but I can live with that I like the idea of training to go on a mat or in your bed...that's my next move...
LOL, this is the first time I've heard of a reluctance to use vinegar. Doesn't anyone add ACV to food?
I don't think it is the substance of vinegar that anyone objects to - I think that it is because you are using it, or attempting to use it, to give the dog an unpleasant experience to then make it stay away from something smelling the same. Just to underline that I think this suggestion is completely harmless because I can't see it working. I can't see any dog drinking a substance that smells so strong as vinegar does in sufficient quantities to give it the required shock to then have a lasting effect such that it avoided surfaces that smelled similar. If it does work though, you would have (in a technical sense) "punished" the dog for approaching vinegar, and quite powerfully, if the effect is then such to prevent counter surfing.
Well I agree it is probably aversives training but so mild that it fails to impress dogs who like vinegar (and pickles) and for those it does work for likely saves them from eating things that might be bad because they are poison (grapes on the counter) or cause a blockage (washcloth?) so for me it's worth it. I don't see this as ME punishing the dog but rather letting him find out not everything up there might be tasty. Punishing is something that is done after the fact, I think. Like maybe some hydrogen peroxide or a stomach surgery. It did work on Oban, if someone else wants to try it now they know how, their choice.
It is a reasonable argument that you think the application of an aversive to deter counter surfing is worth it. I was just explaining that the other respondents indicated otherwise. But this is also where a definition of punishment comes in handy. It doesn't matter that a different dog would find the vinegar tasty - what matters is that your dog did not, and was punished sufficiently to deter him from jumping on the kitchen work surfaces when he smelled what had punished him (the vinegar) the last time he smelled it. The dog, not you, defines what is punishment - and If it has an effect, it is a punishment. If it doesn't have an effect, it isn't. It's not possible for a punishment not to have much of an impact on a dog AND that it is effective immediately to prevent a behaviour. That's just not how dogs learn. This article explains it all: http://www.thelabradorsite.com/punishment-in-dog-training/#dogs-define-punishment
Sorry to hijack the post but JulieT are you Julie T or Juliet? I've been calling you Julie but saw Rosemary call you Juliet and now I'm thinking I'm wrong! Oops!
Haha Emily! That's ok - it's Julie, and the T is the first letter of my family name. Not that it matters, I quite like the name Juliet - not sure I'd like to live with it all the time though.
@Juile T, that's a good article, I see the logic used there. However as a training article which is using animal behaviour as it's background it would be nice to see credits to source material provided. Otherwise it's just someone's opinion, idea, thoughts, well founded in experience as they might be. For me the mildness of the agent used, call it punishment, aversive or aid, is warranted considering the much greater problems that could arise if something bad is ingested from off the counter. It's over and done for us but I will see if I can find some science backed information on the definition of punishment. Thanks for linking the article. ETA: Yes, I fully support trying other methods first, benign, non-aversive, positive reward methods.
Emily and JulieT That was a typo that I didn't notice , not that I can edit on my phone without re-typing the entire post. Sorry for the confusion Also just wanted to say that In all my years of having a dog in the family, and that is more years than I would like to admit, we have never found it necessary to treat worksurfaces or entice a dog to drink vinegar to stop them jumping up. It doesn't take a lot to train them, using positive training methods, not to do it.
I used lemon juice as an aversive for some things when Lilly was little before I found the forum. It was recommended by my trainer at the time. I didn't find the counter surfing a big problem with Lilly but we used the settle on the mat approach. Worked a treat, and also worked with the fabulous Georgie I would highly recommend the mat approach!
Hi Snowshoe. I'm the author of that article, and I do write opinion pieces sometimes but this isn't one of them (I have a science degree if that helps ) The article is an explanation of one aspect of operant conditioning. To link to that research would be quite a task because as with any widely accepted scientific theorem, thousands of experiments and the work of many scientists, have gone into its construction. It isn't just one piece of research it's a whole field or area of behavioural science. This article might help put it all in a broader context though. http://totallygundogs.com/operant-co...ndog-trainers/ Julie is right in saying that whether or not something is punishment is determined by the dogs reaction to it. Where opinion comes into it, is in whether and when punishment of one kind or another is appropriate for a particular situation. We all tend to differ slightly on that one. If you would like to read some of the recent relevant research that has been done in dogs, with regard to punishment, there are quite a few links in this article http://totallydogtraining.com/the-ev...ning-for-dogs/ You can find the scientific studies at the bottom
