PROBLEMS WITH A RUDE PUPPY

Dear Jubilee:

Help! My puppy is four months old, and he is stealing off the counters in the kitchen. He knows not to do it when I am looking, but as soon as I turn my back, he goes for the counters. What can I do to stop him?

And he snaps at all of us, biting my husband and our child, especially when they try to feed him or touch him while he is eating. What can I do? 

At My Wit’s End.

Dear Wit’s End,

I recently heard of what sounds like an improvement on the old trick of using mouse traps to keep dogs off of counter surfaces.

As long as your puppy is not fearful, you can rig up the mouse traps and convince your dog that counter surfing is not a good thing. Get the small mouse traps from the hardware store, not the large rat traps (you are not trying to actually pinch your dog; just trying to fix it so that his environment startles him. How many mouse traps will you need? The number depends on how long your counter is. For example, for a 7-foot counter, get four or five mousetraps. Place them at equal distances along the edge of the counter and set them. Then interweave sheets of newsprint along the counter on top of the mousetraps. Then put something very enticing behind this edging of mouse traps and newspapers. Your dog watches the entire process. Then leave the room. If this works, your dog will jump up to surf the counter, hit one of the newspapers, and all of the mousetraps will go off, convincing your dog that a monster has taken up residence on your counter.

As for the growling and snapping, puppies are mouthy, but this sounds like your puppy is trying to take over your home and set the rules. Have you talked to your puppy’s breeder about his behavior. I suspect it is a case of the puppy is testing your limits, and good breeders will work with you on strategies for overcoming these behaviors before the puppy totally takes over your house, has your whole family buffaloed, and is in charge of your home! 

Your puppy needs to learn quickly that growling, snapping and biting are not appropriate or acceptable behaviors at any time. One way to do this is to have the members of the family that he is bullying be responsible for feeding him so he knows that he depends on them and they are more important than he is Then train your puppy to work for his meals. Nothing is given for free. In our house, one dog stacks; another sits, stays, comes and sits; another sits and looks me in the eye, ignoring the food dish held away from my body; and another stands and looks at me; none of the dogs is allowed to touch the dish until I tell them it is OK to go ahead and eat. So decide what you want the puppy to do, and then teach him to do it and demand it every time you feed him.

You have to put an end to the snapping and biting when you touch him while he is eating. One way that might work is to use a conditioned aversive. A conditioned aversive is something that does not hurt the dog, but it is something that the dog does not like. When the puppy does something that you don’t want him to do, you make a noise and follow up with the thing the dog does not like. In our home, the conditioned aversive is a vocal "Eek!" followed by a squirt of water in the face from a squirt bottle -- nothing cruel, just something the dogs don't like. You don't have to follow through often. After the first squirt or two, they understand. Then for a few times, we pick up the bottle without squirting just to remind them that Eek! introduces the thing they do not like. After that, all we have to do is make the noise, and the behavior stops. I would not do this with a biting adult, but with a four month old puppy, I would reach to touch him and if he snaps, I would say Eek! Very loudly and squirt him in the face. Then I would reach to touch him again. The behavior should stop quickly. Then I would have you husband do it, and you stand ready with the bottle. If he snaps at your husband, I would make the Eek! And squirt. Once he is letting you, your husband and other adults touch him while he is eating, I would make him totally dependent on your child for food for a couple of weeks (under your supervision, of course). Your child should always be able to take things away from the dog and touch him at any time without getting bit, and you have to make the puppy understand his position in your family.

The more self control your puppy can learn, the better, and the more enjoyable life will be for everyone, including him. We teach our dogs that they can be touched while they are eating, that we can remove the food for any reason, and all of our dogs know the command Drop It! and will even drop a chicken wing (we feed a raw diet) with no argument, if we tell them to, and then let us pick up the item and take it away. Drop IT! and Leave IT! are critical commands for their own safety. Last summer, I was walking a dog, and she saw a dead mockingbird. Now we saw a lot of dead birds here last summer because our part of Texas was invaded by West Nile virus last year. The dog went for the bird; I said Leave IT!  quite firmly and the dog backed off, not very enthusiastically, but immediately backed off, and resumed walking with me (albeit pleading for that special item). When we returned, the bird was still there, and the dog totally ignored it.

Jubilee