Garbage-raiding dogs: one clear-cut answer to the challenge - pets

Got a mischevious mutt on your hands? Then you may know this scenario. You walk in the door and your pal greets you with excited tail wagging, wiggling and sloppy doggy kisses. Then suddenly, he's overcome with a guilty look and it's off to cower after the couch. Uh-oh. You know what this means. Sure enough, a betraying trail of eggshells, auburn grinds, lubricate stains and in rags wrappers leads you to the scene of the crime: the kitchen. Your dog's done it again, raided the garbage.

You've tried whacking him, you've tried gating him, you've put him in dog house individual for a few hours as punishment. Still, no affair how much you call and scold, your dog's still up to his no-good hijinks with that annoying kitchen trash pail every time you leave the house. What's a frustrated dog owner to do?

First of all, let's think about who we're production with here. It's a DOG. He might be your attractive pal, and at times he seems smarter than your husband, but the truth is, here's an brute that's at least two steps down on the food chain. Just recall that fact alone may help you accomplish that your dog does not have complex reasoning capacity.

Okay: now that we have the pooch perspective on senior learning, we can argue out the job in a way that your dog will never be able.

If your dog is home alone, bored out of his doggy mind, he's in the long run going to find his way into the kitchen. Sniffing about for a dropped crumb under the table, maybe doing a barely counter-surfing on the sly. Then, he follows his nose to the fermenting dog pound that you call garbage. . . and, half demented from having to beg for his every meal, he directly begins harfing down every delicious morsel. He can't help himself!

When you come home hours later and push your dog's nose into the mess while fast his fanny, his narrow brain is not ever going to master the long-term cause-and-effect of why garbage-raiding is bad and leads to a beating. In this abrupt situation: he knows three variables: him, you, and the garbage. From that down-to-earth vantage point, your just about his nose into the gobbledygook 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 spree and only knows that 1. he's happy to see you, 2. there's compost around, and 3. you're yelling at him. But he doesn't ask "Why?" for the reason that he has no aptitude to reason.

How are beatings and scoldings going to keep him from going on his trash rampages? They're not!

You can use down-to-earth Pavlov-style actions conditioning to make your dog perform all through affirmative reinforcement. The trick to this is repetition of a free stimuli: Command, execute, reward. All of this is immediate. It's also the aim dogs bark every time they hear a carillon on the TV. But we'll never be able to describe to the dog that the bells on the TV is not the real doorbell. And you'll never convert him that if he stays away from the gobbledygook he won't get a walloping. If you can, then I bring to mind you have him join MENSA, since that is one genius dog!

So, the real answer to the gobbledygook marauding dilemma is this: you're going to have to move the junk out of your dog's reach. It's a down-to-earth fix for an exasperating problem, and in all probability the only analyze why you haven't done it previously is as you don't want to alter your stuff about for a dog. Well, you're not doing it for the dog! You're doing it for your own peace of mind.

Now, where can you move the junk to? You can pick it up and place it on top of the washing machine, if that's at the back of a close door you can close. You can rearrange the cleaning foodstuffs under your kitchen sink and fit it under there, and then buy or alter a lock for the cabinet door. You can shut it in the garage on your way out. You can hoist it up on a countertop that your dog can'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 of money on dog compliance classes. You didn't have to go all through the calamity of laying into your diminutive pup when he's generous you those big, sad eyes. And best of all, you didn't have to come home and Febreeze the breathing heck out of your livingroom rug.

Move the garbage. For the love of dog!

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All constitutional rights reserved.

Dina Giolitto is a copywriting consultant and ghostwriter with 10 years of come into contact with journalism corporate print resources and web content. Trust her with your next e-book, critique chain or web project, and make a lasting brand on your listeners of hungry prospects. Visit http://www. wordfeeder. com for more information.