Garbage-Raiding Dogs: One Simple Solution to the Problem

Got a mischievous mutt on your hands? Then you may know thisscenario. You walk in the door and your pal greets you withelated tail wagging, wiggling and sloppy doggy kisses. Thensuddenly, he's overcome with a guilty look and it's off to cowerbehind the couch. Uh-oh. You know what this means. Sure enough, atelltale trail of eggshells, coffee grinds, grease stains andtattered wrappers leads you to the scene of the crime: thekitchen. Your dog's done it again, raided the garbage.You've tried whacking him, you've tried gating him, you've puthim in dog house solitary for a few hours as punishment. Still,no matter how much you holler and scold, your dog's still up tohis no-good hijinks with that darned kitchen trash pail everytime you leave the house. What's a frustrated dog owner to do?First of all, let's think about who we're dealing with here. It'sa DOG. He might be your lovable pal, and at times he seemssmarter than your husband, but the truth is, here's an animalthat's at least two steps down on the food chain. Justremembering that fact alone may help you realize that your dogdoes not have advanced reasoning capacity.Okay: now that we have the pooch perspective on higher learning,we can reason out the situation in a way that your dog will neverbe able.If your dog is home alone, bored out of his doggy mind, he'seventually going to find his way into the kitchen. Sniffingaround for a dropped crumb under the table, maybe doing a littlecounter-surfing on the sly. Then, he follows his nose to thefermenting dog buffet that you call garbage... and, half crazedfrom having to beg for his every meal, he immediately beginsharfing down every delicious morsel. He can't help himself!When you come home hours later and push your dog's nose into themess while spanking his fanny, his limited brain is not evergoing to master the long-term cause-and-effect of whygarbage-raiding is bad and leads to a beating. In this immediatesituation: he knows three variables: him, you, and the garbage.>From that simple vantage point, your pushing his nose into thegarbage equals a scolding.However, when you're NOT there, that's only TWO variables: him,and the garbage. To him, that means "Let's chow down!" Later,when you come home, he's well-forgotten the garbage-raiding spreeand only knows that 1. he's happy to see you, 2. there's garbagearound, and 3. you're yelling at him. But he doesn't ask "Why?"because he has no ability to reason.How are beatings and scoldings going to keep him from going onhis trash rampages? They're not!You can use simple Pavlov-style behavior conditioning to makeyour dog behave through positive reinforcement. The trick to thisis repetition of a single stimuli: Command, execute, reward. Allof this is immediate. It's also the reason dogs bark every timethey hear a doorbell on the TV. But we'll never be able toexplain to the dog that the doorbell on the TV is not the realdoorbell. And you'll never convince him that if he stays awayfrom the garbage he won't get a walloping. If you can, then Isuggest you have him join MENSA, because that is one genius dog!So, the real solution to the garbage raiding predicament is this:you're going to have to move the garbage out of your dog's reach.It's a simple fix for an annoying problem, and probably the onlyreason why you haven't done it already is because you don't wantto change your stuff around for a dog. Well, you're not doing itfor the dog! You're doing it for your own peace of mind.Now, where can you move the garbage to? You can pick it up andplace it on top of the washing machine, if that's behind a nearbydoor you can close. You can rearrange the cleaning products underyour kitchen sink and fit it under there, and then buy or fashiona lock for the cabinet door. You can shut it in the garage onyour way out. You can hoist it up on a countertop that your dogcan't jump up on. You can stow it away in the bathroom.There now, was that so hard? You didn't have to spend tons ofmoney on dog obedience classes. You didn't have to go through theheartbreak of laying into your little pup when he's giving youthose big, sad eyes. And best of all, you didn't have to comehome and Febreeze the living heck out of your living room rug.Move the garbage. For the love of dog!