How to Stop a Dog From Stealing Food off the Counters

Honey is a nine-month-old Goldendoodle who lives in Los Angeles. Her guardians set up a dog behavior training session to get her to stop countersurfing, stealing things off counters, stop jumping up, stop mouthing, stop chewing shoes and humping.

Honey was pretty well behaved when I arrived for the session. I was expecting a lot of jumping, but one of the guardians had taken her out for a walk before the session. As a result, she didn’t have all the excess energy she normally had which resulted in more desirable behavior. I like to call this putting a dog into a position to succeed.

Honey lives in a very active home with several family members. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you approach the situation. If everyone is working with the dog and reinforcing good habits and behavior through positive dog training, the larger group allows the dog to make quicker progress.

On the other hand, if you have people who pet when the dog is doing undesired actions or when the dog is excited, invite them to break the rules etc, that person will slow down or stop the dog’s progress.

One of the main dog behavior problems Honey’s guardians wanted to address was her counter surfing. A few weeks before the session, Honey got on the counter and stole an unbaked loaf of bread which got her pretty sick. But since the sickness came hours later, she didn’t learn not to do it again.

I tried out a technique but when it didn’t prove effective, I went over a different approach. You can learn how to stop a dog from getting on the counter by watching the free dog behavior training tip in the video below.

As I mentioned in the video, the guardians may need to change the target and the receptacle after Honey has a few successful encounters with the setup I detail in the above video. But based on her behavior, I’m guessing this technique will stop her days of getting on the counter for good.

By the end of the session, Honey had stopped trying to jump up, was sitting to ask for attention and seemed to be looking to her guardians for direction. The more they pet with a purpose, enforce rules and practice the dog training exercises I showed them in the session, the faster she will change and give up her unwanted dog behavior.

We finished things up by going over a Roadmap to success for Honey. You can check out all the free dog behavior tips I shared with them by watching he video below.