FOOD THIEVES

[maximoo]

Let's share stories here of food items our dogs have stolen.

Max found a bag of peanuts in the shell. My husband left them somewhere on a table or something... Anyway he was quietly laying in the livingroom, and I went to the bedrm. I emerged from the bedrm about 15 mts later to see Max polishing off a bag of peanuts and shells all over the floor! I couldn't believe my eyes! He was eating the last one and I actually saw him crack open the shell and dig out the nut. I guess munching on Kongsicles gave him some talent! It was so funny! Well of course I wondered if he wld get sick/diarrhea from eating a lot of peanuts. He was perfectly fine, tho he did produce a nutty poo the next day lol

[Fundog]

Well, I probably don't need to say it, but I will anyway, just cos we know someone else will if I don't: If our dogs get something they shouldn't, it is our fault for leaving it within reach. (Okay, rebuke over)

And... I (and my family) have been very slow at learning our lesson. So far, Dottie has never nabbed anything-- in fact, I've never seen her counter surf in all the time she's been with us!

But Annie (oh, my!): We keep our butter dish out on the counter, next to the toaster. We like it soft; that's why we leave it out. One morning I was basking in the sun on my patio. Annie stepped out of her doggy flap carrying a little white tray that looked suspiciously like a butter dish, without any butter. I decided I'd better get up and check. Sure enough, she had eaten an entire 1/4 lb. stick of butter! Hence her nickname, "Fluffy Butter Butt."

One evening my son baked some cookies. We left them on a plate to cool, on the counter, while we went to his choir performance. When we came back, I was sooo looking forward to cookies and milk. Alas, they were gone-- "Fluffy Butter Butt" ate an entire dozen cookies! I was sooo disappointed.

And another evening, we had pork chops for dinner. My family saved me one, since they had eaten before I woke up, and left it-- you guessed it-- on the counter. Just as I was getting ready to go eat it, she got to it first. Well, my husband fished that one out of her mouth, since it wouldn't not have been good for her to eat a whole pork chop, especially with the bone still in it. I was a lot angrier than I had right to be, however. I was having a really bad day. The next morning I made an appointment with my doctor to get on Prozac.



You all are probably dying to ask me why we continue to leave food on the counter. Well, truth be told, Annie *usually* doesn't counter surf-- it's just an occasional thing. Most of the time, just putting it farther back on the counter, or on the back burners of the stove are sufficient enough away not to tempt her. We're getting better about making sure we at least push trays and plates and such further back (well, I am, anyway-- I'm always going into the kitchen to see that things have been put out of reach, or simply away entirely. My family tends to forget still.)

[Fundog]

Oh-- and we started putting the butter in a container with a lid.

[wvvdiup1]

I'm knocking on wood here because so far I've been lucky I have never had a dog who counter surfs - at least, I've never saw them. But, there has been the exception of the dinner table. Some years ago, we were getting ready to sit down for our Thanksgiving dinner, when all of a sudden Della stood on her back legs and reached with her muzzle for the turkey! I just caught her in time before she even touched the turkey, told her to leave it, and saw her sidekick Hobo, my dad's dog, beside her as if she was eggin' Della to do this, so I told Della don't listen to her because she'll get you into trouble!

I couldn't blame Della for going for the turkey, because it did smell really good, especially after slow roasting the turkey for about 12 hours! You know the aroma of roasted turkey not only fills the house, but seeps outside!

In the end, those two "Bonnie and Clydes" got their share of turkey, but it wasn't our reward hours after they had eaten their turkey of what came afterwards!

wvvdiup1

[maximoo]

One day Max stole a piece of toast from my husband. His mouth only touched that toast but husband was so freaked out that he threw the rest of the toast away--5 slices (and bread is nearly $3.50 a loaf! ):x

Another day Max was eyeballing my son as he walked pass with a plate of pixxa. His well timed jump caused pizza to fall into his waiting jaws. I was about 10 ft away. I rushed over to get it out of his mouth but he already INHALED IT! I never seen him woof down something that FAST!
At the time I thought he would get sick, but he was perfectly fine. I really think Max is part goat sometime

[emmabeth]

Mmm.. if we threw things away that dogs mouths had slightly touched, we'd never eat a thing!

And food without dog hair in it..... thats 'low protein' food in our house!

Seriously though, all our dogs have to learn not to dive at food on plates when we sit down as we have no dining table and have to eat sat on the sofa.

That means that Kelda being tall has her head above the plate level and if she actually decided to take what she wanted... we would really have little option to stop her.

Fortunately she learned as a puppy both intentionally, by me making sure she didnt get rewarded for chancing a quick snatch.... and accidentally when she stuck her nose in some hot beans, that snatching isnt a good plan.

We did however have more than a few episodes where toast or sandwhiches had a corner with deerhound teeth marks in it or had to make mental notes 'dont eat that corner, shes licked it'...

If I do have a dog learn to jump up and snatch, I tend not to dive over and take the food from them - as you describe Maximoo... dogs with 'stolen' food eat really fast if you chase them, and I would rather they didnt because theres a big risk of them burning themselves swallowing hot food or choking by not chewing it, and of course they just learn to snatch faster and run further next time, rather than learning not to do it in the first place.

Instead I make a mental note to feed less at the next meal time, and work on a 'no snatching' plan.

Dilly once ate something really crazy.... watercolour pencils, really expensive ones at that! He did rainbow coloured poo for a whole day after that!

[spydre]

Hmmm, let's see - for brevity's sake I'll stick to Dodger and my past dog, Loth. I'll leave Lucy, our first dog, just to say that we nicknamed her "pica dog" because she would eat anything, and while we had her we had to make sure that we pulled the knobs off our gas stove if we weren't home so that she didn't set the house on fire! And once she ate enough Chocolate Reisen's candies so that she should have been dead a few times over.

With Loth, she wasn't quite as bad of a counter surfer - actually, she didn't really try to jump up and get much of anything, unless she was really hungry and we weren't home. Or it was a really, really tasty treat that she just HAD to have - cookies (chocolate or otherwise), m&m's (she must have had a chocolate tolerance or something), beef jerky are all things that she really, really WORKED at to jump up high enough to get off the entertainment center when we weren't home. She wasn't bad about getting into the trash, but when she did, she got it good -she would drag as much as she could out, play with it, and eat (including wrappers sometimes) whatever she wanted. Luckily, this didn't happen that often - usually the biggest times we could expect it - but not always - was if we had fast food, particularly White Castle, because the kids get cheesy fries, so she would dig in to lick the cheese out of the boxes!

Now, Dodger, we really have to work on his sneakiness. He's usually pretty good about just laying in the kitchen when we are cooking (unless we are dropping yummy stuff, or it involves peanut butter or cheese). But a week or so ago, we'd had spaghetti for dinner, and I had it sitting on the very back of the counter (where I didn't expect he could reach) to cool before I put the leftovers up. I think there were 1, maybe 2 servings left in the pot. I went upstairs for a little bit to let it cool before putting up the leftovers, and came back down 10 minutes later and found that Dodger had cleaned the pot out! A couple of times, when we've been gone, we have accidently left out the tupperware type container that we put the bread in to keep it fresh longer. Of course, those happened to be the times that he either totally freaked about being alone, or the time he was left alone the longest, and during his meal time to boot (last weekend) and was hungry. Sure enough, he got the container down, brought it in the living room, got it open and helped himself to 1/2 a loaf of bread! That day last weekend, I felt so bad, though. It was the day of a family funeral (and we ended up getting into an accident on the way there). They held up the service so relatives could come pick us up (put the service well over an hour behind), so the early dinner at the restaurant ran much later than it should have - and since we did not have our own car, we were at the mercy of my in-laws (and it was my mother-in-law's brother's funeral, so they weren't going to leave early). So by the time we got home, Dodger had been alone for 7 hours (the longest yet), and we were 3 hours past his dinner time. He wasn't a happy doggy with us that night.

[spydre]

Oh, and just to share - my in-law's aussie shepherd is a champion table surfer. Once, he got about a half a block of cheese, and ate it all (including the saran wrap - which of course came out the other end.

and um, my mother in law thought trying to take a half a block (and I mean a block about the size of a velveeta loaf) out of the dog's mouth was going to be successful.... you know, I can understand getting it from them if it isn't actually in the mouth.....but with something that large, if it's in the mouth, you know sometimes it's not the best idea to try to take that out of his mouth..... This was a dog that failed obedience school 3 times, and she got mad because he snapped at her hand when she tried to take it.

[melhos123]

lol, these are great. (as long as nobody gets hurt)

We had Vizlas growing up and they were the sneakiest devils!

Once we left doughnuts on the counter, and our two dogs unwrapped them and licked the frosting off. Because they knew they'd get in trouble if the ate the whole thing! Well, my mom had bought them and left them there, and then my dad went to eat one, luckily he asked my mom why she left the doughnuts unwrapped, and didn't eat one! They finally put 2 and 2 together! LOL!

One of those two dogs also stole a whole loaf of bread from my grandma, and we could see it in her stomach! Luckily she just threw it up, and wasn't too worse for the wear.

[Mattie]

I had missed this thread, ow were do I start

Merlin is was my worst, he managed to get a box of chocolates off a shelf that was 7ft off the ground, ate the lot, box, Christmas wrapping paper and many of the chocolates were still in their wrappers when the vet opened him up.

I had a cupboard door that if Merlin touched it, the door would fall out, did this deteriate this wimp, of course not, he eventually learnt how to open it without it falling, took out a jar of salmon oil capsuls, unscrewed the top and ate all the capsuls except 2, I had got to him then.

Hubby had a stroke and lost the use of his right hand and arm so could only use his left which he was awkward with at first. He would be sitting having a pasty or sandwich watching the tv with something in his hand, he would put the food in his mouth but it wasn't there any more. Hubby got into trouble for spoiling my dog

I walked into the kitchen one day to find Tilly in the sink, just about to grab some food that was cooling on the windowledge.

I left 2 rhubarb pies on the cooker to cool over night, come down the following morning and 1 bite had been taken out of both of them, it seemed Samantha didn't like rhubarb.

When I am in the caravan I always barbecue all the meat and fish, I prepare a salad before cooking but one day I didn't put my salad away, when I came back into the van, no salad, don't know who took that but suspect Tilly.

Dog hairs are all part of eating, somehow food doesn't taste as good without them.

[spydre]

Gah! We came home yesterday, Dodger had erm, had a virtual fit while we were gone. One of the things that we "found" was a torn up package of M&M's. My desk is one of those computer hutches from about 10 - 15 years ago. My printer is on top of it - the M&M's were on top of the printer, still sealed in the bag. And we have NEVER given chocolate to Dodger, so he wouldn't have the expectation of getting it from us. But sure enough, he decided he needed that nummy looking package.

Poor guy, he's paying for his mistake. He now has a serious case of the runs. Of course we are paying for it too - I swear, the sugar from those has given him a sugar high unlike any hyper state he's had since he's been here! I actually had to put him in a time out this morning - and mornings when the kids aren't here are usually his snooze time!

[maximoo]

I hope you learn your lesson DODGER! lol

Well Max had a fruitful 2 days. Ystrdy he spied some hot dogs my son left on the couch while he momentarily left. ZOOM! A hot dog gone in a flash, he left the bread. Son yelled at him then put the bread on the table since it now had no hot dog. Now Max had to think so he steathily snuck around the other end of table & SNAP! Bread gone! He got a very small dinner after that!

Today we had Popeye's chicken. MMM!MMMM! the smell was too much for Max. So we tethered him temporarily, well my son did. However somehow he didn't connect the clip correctly and thought Max was completely tethered (do you see where I am going with this?) Well I was done and turned my back to use computer and left chkn scraps on snack table, All of a sudden I hear CRUNCH!! Breast bone/skin nowhere to be seen and a happy dog before me licking his chops! I was nervous because I've always heard not to let dogs eats cooked bones but so far so good.

One other small thing happened tell me what ou think. There were some chicken scraps in the garbage can, and at one point Max raced to get to it. My son blocked & shouted No! Max barked at him in defiance! I almost want to say he wanted to guard that can with the chkn in it. I don't remember what happened next, but they both left the kitchen, and i emptied the can. Do any of you think that
Max wanted to really guard the chkn?

[spydre]

Just from my experience, I don't think he wanted to guard the chicken, he wanted the chicken for himself. Chicken in the trash was one of the things that would drive Loth into invading the trash can at night (and she was never quiet about it). But, if she did get into the trash at night, she usually wouldn't come down with me in the morning! Somehow she remembered that not only she did it, but that it was wrong!

Dodger got into the trash yesterday while we were out. We THINK that he was after the mint chocolate chip ice cream box that was in there, but I should have known better and put the trash on the back porch anyway, since it was nearly full. He also tried looking on the top of my desk for more munchies evidently, as he activated something, and you could see random typing on my comp, and the keyboard was scooted over to next to the wall, lol.

[maximoo]

My friend's 7 lb chihuahua is a master at stealing food. Her grndma was preparing a whole chicken for dinner but stepped away leaving it on the counter. Well this itty-bitty dog sure has some height to her jump! Somehow she jumped high enough to make the chicken fall. She ate the whole thing. It was bigger than her! When Grndma rtn'd she met a chicken carcass and a very stuffed & happy chi!

[ckranz]

Growing up I had a wonderful Irish Setter. One Halloween she managed to find all the andy we had purchased to give to all the trick or treaters. We came home to find 4 bags of wrappers and plastic scattered throughout the house.

We were very very lucky as most of the candy we had purchased was chocolate. She only had the runs for about 3 days. After that success and the following discomfort she never again ventured for sweet smelling candy....I think the only time this type of behavior which was a successful hunt was clearly not self rewarding.