Bentley just turned 8 mo old, he is pretty solid in his training, sit, down, stay, leave it, come he does very well. Lately he has increasingly has gotten into things he shouldn't. Yes it took us a couple of times to be sure the counter is clear. He knows it's not ok because he does it when we leave the room. We can leave for 2 min to got to the restroom and he will have got a piece of paper off the counter. Thankfully he doesn't chew furniture but he finds something. How do we break this habit of him jumping up on the counter and looking for something? we never leave food out so it has never been food, but a pen, paper a container, my husband left the remote on the table and he got that and again he knows he's not suppose to and the only reason I know is because he will take it in his crate or as soon as you come around the corner he will put his head down. help what can we do? Would just crating him every single time we leave the room help reset him?
May be have the counter completely empty hence there is definitely no reward available to him (I guess even finding a piece of paper or a pen, even not food is still a reward). And yes not leave the room is another option we use. If you need to go to the loo, take him with you or give him something to keep him busy so he doesn't think of searching for his own activity (ie:A frozen King...)
I know this is going to be a really hard one for you to accept, but he doesn't know it's not "ok". All he knows is that IT WORKS when you are not there: When you are there, it is not possible to do this. When you are absent, IT WORKS. And - dogs do what works. So it is simply about learning theory and the laws of learning theory. This is different to knowing it is 'not ok', which implies that the dog 1) knows the rules of the house and 2) wilfully chooses to disobey them. Can you see how that sets you up to feel very differently about your dog? (And react accordingly?) Again - no - he doesn't "know he's not supposed to". Dogs frequently take items they 'enjoy' to their crates - their safe, private place where they can enjoy exploring them. It doesn't mean he's trying to hide it from you. To assume that, is to apply human thoughts and emotions onto your dog. As for 'he will put his head down', you might want to have a read of this - because these behaviours are canine appeasement signals: https://petcentral.chewy.com/behavi...og-6-behaviors-that-dont-mean-what-you-think/ All the dog knows, is that in this particular situation - he has taken something from the side, and you have come in the room - anger from you often ensues - that this has happened several times, in the past. And so the dog tries to appease you and turn off your anger as soon as you appear - through these looks and this behaviour. But knowing that you are angry and trying to turn that off, doesn't mean the dog understands WHY you are angry in the first place, nor that the dog understands they did something "wrong". So - before getting to how to address the behaviour, please try to frame and think of it differently. Prevention is always the best course of action. This means either ensuring there are NONE of these items left available to the dog on the surfaces around the room. OR crating the dog when you leave the room and can't directly supervise. OR taking the dog with you into another room and perhaps stairgating in another room where there isn't this amount of 'stuff'. Some rooms have more 'stuff' for nosy dogs to investigate than others... But somehow or other, you have to figure out some kind of barrier - crate, stair-gate, tether - for any time when you are not there to directly supervise, combined with removing all items from the edge of surfaces before you leave the room. Do make sure you are also spending time daily training and exercising your dog sufficiently, as well as providing treat toys and stuffed Kongs etc etc. Often dogs get into annoying behaviours like this because they are just mentally under-stimulated so they are "exploring" their environment to see what else they can entertain themselves with... and sometimes ANY attention from an owner is better than NO attention - so even if you return and find the dog with something and are angry, at least you are giving the dog attention. Which, for some dogs, is reinforcing if they don't get enough attention at other times.
Bless him, he is not naughty, just not had enough time to proof his training. At that age with Meg we had a child gate on every door, so she never had the opportunity to steal things. I then worked super had at obedience classes with her and by the time she was 18m maybe she could be trusted pretty well. She has never destroyed anything, but I think that is because her younger years, she didn’t have the chance.
Same here. We never leave our pup unsupervised and therefore he has never destroyed anything. It works.
Thank you for your insight and it makes complete sense in what you are saying!! So therefore it is not hard for me to accept. Providing we make sure we are proofing and keeping him from getting into these things, does he just magically grow out of it and stop the behavior eventually? We are not new to puppies, we just have not had a dog ever do this.
