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We're taking care of a small Boykin spaniel and she is proving to be a champion counter-surfer. Turned my back on her for an instant and she got eight strips of bacon off the counter, paper towel and all. I had just cooked the bacon for BLT's. She wolfed them down so swiftly -- and growled at me when I tried to rescue the last bits! The little scamp.
Guess she couldn't resist the temptation. I understand. I love bacon myself. But she'd already had her dinner, the glutton.
So now I've learned (I hope) not to leave anything on the counter.
Wow, I hope she was okay. That's a lot of fat for a smallish dog and pancreatitis can be serious. When I worked at a vet clinic we usually saw a couple of cases after Thanksgiving every year.
Our first greyhound, Audrey, was a champion counter surfer. After a slightly less problematic encounter with a whole sesame bagel, we too learned to leave absolutely nothing on the counters.
My Catahoula once hoovered a dozen breakfast burritos while I relaxed on the couch waiting for them to cool. His stomach wasn't even distended. I don't understand how, lol.
None of my dogs ever have, except for Wyatt McRiot. He was a sneak thief when he joined my family and it took a lot of work and a lot of time to convince him that it wasn't ok. He'd learned that he could do anything he wanted as long as no one saw him.
I still don't leave tempting food out unsupervised because of Wyatt. We call the microwave "the dog safe". He has this irresistible attraction to cheap bakery frosting and I think that was the last straw that cost him his last home. Little kid birthday party with a nice big commercial birthday cake was too much for him to resist.
Pensive's head is eye level, but she won't touch anything on the counters. All of the deerhounds looked down on the counters and not one of them ever stole anything.
Izzy, my present dog, won't touch anything that isn't his. I can leave a plate of food sitting on a chair, on the floor, anywhere within his reach and leave the room - I can even go down to the basement and load the washing machine - and when I come back, the food is still on the plate, totally untouched. It could be the most tempting, mouthwatering dish on the plate and Iz will leave it alone.
My last dog, however, was an entirely different matter.
Kaya was notorious for stealing food left on the counter when no one was looking. Her favourite pillage of choice? Avocadoes. This was back in the day before it was generally known that avocadoes can do serious harm to a dog, and apparently Kaya didn't know this either. The only evidence that would be left of her canine thievery would be a completely cleaned-out avocado peel, along with a rather well-polished pit later to be discovered rolling around under a chair somewhere.
She also once stole a large hamburger from a frying pan on the stove top. I happened to be walking by the bedroom door when I spotted Kaya, her mouth completely crammed full of burger, staring back at me. She froze for a second and then, with all the casualness of a well-seasoned food bandit, she "ptooooied" the burger out of her maw, launching it clear across the room, where it arced high in the air and then landed with a dull thud against the dresser. Then with a wag of her tail she looked back at me as if to say, "Oh hey...didn't see ya there. How you doin'?"
Last edited by bassetluv; 09-20-2017 at 01:50 AM..
Yes, my dog has done it. She first learned to grab things from the counter thanks to my daughter leaving foods right at the edge. She even started taking random things like pencils, napkins, pot holder.
She hasn't taken anything off the counter in a while which is good. It's a terrible habit and hard to break once they start doing it.
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