Food Stealing

[zoezoom]

Can anyone suggest any positive solutions to stop my darling ACD from stealing? She is a marvellous, lovable dog with a CDX title, but I just can't get her to stop stealing. I put it down to the fact that she is a rescued "Street kid"! That's my excuse anyway.

We are usually pretty vigilant, but on New year's Day after a party, our minds were not very sharp and we turned our backs for a minute and she managed to steal quite a sizeable piece of French Brie! The following night was spent making a visit to Animal Emergency Hospital as she was displaying signs of discomfort.

Would love to hear some suggestions please.

[BrunoBella]

The only thing that works for me is to never leave food out.

BP

[poodlefan]

The only thing I can suggest is hyper vigilance.

I know food stealers who've never gone hungry a day in their lives. Background doesn't seem to have all that much to do with it - some dogs are just 'good hunters' it seems.

[The Spotted Devil]

My ACD was a shocker and my Dally boy isn't much better....come to think of it my cats do it too I simply don't leave anything out if I'm not watching....the problem is the very tiniest lick is so self-rewarding that it's difficult to prevent. Thank goodness for crate training :p

[sidoney]

I have a Kelpie that counter surfs and the others don't really try.

Lack of vigilance on my part, persistence on hers, and the self rewarding behaviour I think, has contributed to it.

We've trained ourselves to keep food out of reach. But the odd time that someone forgets contributes to the behaviour, and in fact would strengthen it (variable ratio of reinforcement with a long interval between reinforcements).

[Rysup]

I have a food stealer here - he is 4 months old!! He would eat until he burst, but then probably throw up and keep going!

[The Spotted Devil]

But the odd time that someone forgets contributes to the behaviour, and in fact would strengthen it (variable ratio of reinforcement with a long interval between reinforcements).

Exactly!

My ACD stole and consumed an entire loaf of bread (plus bag :p ) the night before she was put to sleep at age 17 (it wasn't the cause of illness) - the dear old girl went out in style and true to form

[Tonymc]

Zoe,some more information would be needed.Has she regularily stolen Food? Does she when stealing food make use of only one location such as bench or does it not matter where the Food happens to be? Tony

[zoezoom]

Zoe,some more information would be needed.Has she regularily stolen Food? Does she when stealing food make use of only one location such as bench or does it not matter where the Food happens to be? Tony

Hi Tony

Zoe will steal food from anywhere, any time given the opportunity. Unfortunately she suffers with skin allergies and is (sadly) on cortisone, which of course exacerbates the problem. We do not feed her bits from the table and she is only fed at proper meal times and of course food rewards when training.

[Kavik]

I've had two food stealers (who would counter surf and steal anything, anywhere!), one who is good around food and one who doesn't steal or counter surf but probably has the potential to do so ( a relative of sidoney's counter surfer )

Belle who passed away last year was the worst! She would counter surf, get on the table, and could open the lid to every bin we tried. Zoe isn't as bad - she hasn't figured out how to open the bin :p - I just make sure that food is placed well out of reach, and they are not around when food is eaten or prepared.

Diesel is so laid back we can have him on the couch while we eat off the coffee table and he doesn't even look at the food! Kaos is pretty good, we can have him around during food preparation and he doesn't counter surf, he likes to watch OH cook though ;) and OH gives him a sniff of the food before preparation, Kaos sniffs it and leaves it alone. If he gets too interested while we are eating he will back off if told off. His tendency to deer leap onto my lap however means he is not generally around when we are eating

[Arya]

Zoom zoom, you are not alone as you can see and I've always worked on the principle that vigilance is the nicest way to deal with this. You can use aversives (Ive seen a video, an old Innotek one where the e-collar use was all wrong anyway) to train not to counter surf but hey, if the opportunity arose and nobody was around, I reckon most would still do it. My girl will not ever food steal if I'm around at home BUT, here is story for you that will make you feel better. I had made caramel slices and took them to family get together. I put about a dozen on coffee table and there were half a dozen left and Tess came up to table and was about to take and my father snatched away. Being paranoid, he insisted her breath had been near them and wouldn't let me put them back out. SO, took them home next day had friend around for coffee. Put them out for her (dog really HADN'T touched them. We moved from chairs to look at something and while attention off, Tess came up and took ONE and nicked off to corner of room. I turned around and saw dog attempting to hide. She only took one and I reckon she thought if she scoffed the lot we'd notice but if she sneaked off with one nobody would be any the wiser. They are cunning when it comes to food, aren't they!! In fact, I bet I made this problem ten times worse and I almost collapsed laughing at the expression on her face when she was sprung.

As an aside, where food stealing really comes into its own is at Easter. When working as a vet nurse each Easter we used to see dogs with choc poisoning where they'd raided the Easter booty to be hyper-vigilant around this time

[MarkS]

Talking about Innotek. You could try their 'Zones' . These are very affective for training dogs to avoid certain areas/locations.

[MonElite]

TOT

[MrsD]

Jarrah is the worst (or should that be best?) thief in the world. Doesnt matter what it is, he will steal it. Not confined to food either although he has been known to steal (& eat) corn cobs, grape stalks & the stalks of tomatoes. If he thinks it's someone elses, he'll steal it.

As Dagboy said to me the other night when I was training him, he is totally driven - whatever you have, he wants. Great for training.

[zoezoom]

Hi everyone - thanks for all the great stories - seems I am far from alone!

I concur with Mrs D - a hungry dog is easy to train! I guess we'll just have to be extremely vigilant - forever.

Zoezoom