# Counter surfing and Habanero peppers.



## redddog (May 9, 2009)

A friend of ours has a trainer who told them that if you wrap a habanero pepper in some cheese and leave it for the dog to eat off the counter, the dog will quickly learn that whatever is up on the counter is very hot and sucky. Once is all that's required. 

Those things are wicked hot. Could this hurt the dog? Is there a better way?


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## Heidi36oh (Feb 27, 2007)

Hmmm...I know two of mine would eat the pepper without hesitation..LOL

Some people on here say, double sided tape applied to the front of the counter works.


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## gold'nchocolate (May 31, 2005)

The thing that worked for me was to tie several empty tin cans along a length of string and then attach them to a goody that is sitting on the counter. When the dog takes the goody, the cans come along for the ride  After awhile you don't even need to attach the cans, all you need to do is sit a can at the edge of the counter and the dog will stay away. This worked for Biscuit and Sasha who were terrible counter surfers.

Have your movie camera ready for the first time....it's very funny when they first pull the cans down and run away but keep coming back to try to get the object. This is *not* a good technique for a fearful or noise phobic dog. I would never use this for Jack, but then again, Jack would never steal anything off the counter.


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## gold'nchocolate (May 31, 2005)

Heidi36oh said:


> Hmmm...I know two of mine would eat the pepper without hesitation..LOL


Same here, yesterday Sasha at a piece of deodorant soap that she found in the tub and never blinked an eye :yuck:


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## Jo Ellen (Feb 25, 2007)

Hmmm.....wicked hot seems cruel to me.


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## Heidi36oh (Feb 27, 2007)

gold'nchocolate said:


> Same here, yesterday Sasha at a piece of deodorant soap that she found in the tub and never blinked an eye :yuck:


LOL, yuck the things they eat, Chloe loves to steal the soap in the bathroom, Chewie well let's just say that dog don't care what it is he eats, including my pager:doh:


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## BeauShel (May 20, 2007)

I would not use the habanero pepper. If he did eat it it could cause some terrible side effects that you dont want to deal with and hurt him.


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

gold'nchocolate said:


> The thing that worked for me was to tie several empty tin cans along a length of string and then attach them to a goody that is sitting on the counter. When the dog takes the goody, the cans come along for the ride  After awhile you don't even need to attach the cans, all you need to do is sit a can at the edge of the counter and the dog will stay away. This worked for Biscuit and Sasha who were terrible counter surfers.
> 
> Have your movie camera ready for the first time....it's very funny when they first pull the cans down and run away but keep coming back to try to get the object. This is *not* a good technique for a fearful or noise phobic dog. I would never use this for Jack, but then again, Jack would never steal anything off the counter.


I did this with my mom's flatcoat -- except I used some aluminum pie pans and a muffin tin, tied to a piece of chicken. Left him alone with it and it took Maguire about two seconds to check it out and pull the pans on top of himself. Holy cow you should have seen him run from the kitchen! I played it up and babied him and we were both convinced that was the scariest thing ever. 
IT WORKED -- and the good thing was, he did not associate the scary thing with a person -- so it didn't matter if someone was in the kitchen or not, he gave up counter surfing.


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## RoxyNoodle (Nov 9, 2007)

I have a similar technique - just leave a few flat roasting tins on the counter and a tasty food lure. When the little blighters paws are on the counter and about to snaffle himself a treat chuck a set of keys on the tin. As you're a distance away, your pup can turn to you for any reassurance he might need and hey presto. Does need you to be around watching though.


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## FlyingQuizini (Oct 24, 2006)

Will it work depends on the dog. You're banking on what 's knows as single event learning (SEL), which requires that one event be so horribly, terribly traumatic that you get instant generalization - something that noramally takes a while for dogs.

You MAY get SEL with the pepper, but I suspect it will come at quite a digestive cost. And if you don't get a SEL (no way to know in advance) then you've just subjected your pup to a really unpleasant situation that may result in lots of FIRE POOP that you BOTH have to deal with. Or, your dog may simply learn that things that smell like cheese-covered peppers aren't safe to take off the counter, but anything else is fair game.

If you opt for rigging the counter with a horrible noise maker, the trick, as pointed out earlier, is to baby the heck out of your dog once he's startled himself. YOU have to act just as scared so that he really thinks the world has come to an end.


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## lgnutah (Feb 26, 2007)

Wouldn't lots of dogs just bolt the thing so quickly that they wouldn't even taste the hot pepper.....and then you would just get the digestive problem to deal with. I guess if you want the habanero to be the deterent, just string habaneros along the counter top?


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## FlyingQuizini (Oct 24, 2006)

lgnutah said:


> Wouldn't lots of dogs just bolt the thing so quickly that they wouldn't even taste the hot pepper.....and then you would just get the digestive problem to deal with. I guess if you want the habanero to be the deterent, just string habaneros along the counter top?


Haha... I'm picturing the string of red chili pepper lights!  

Hard to say if they just gulped it -- who knows what they might associate the digestive upset with.

I saw footage of wolves that were set up with tainted sheep meat. Whatever they tainted the sheep meat with (I forget) made the wolves violently ill. The end result was that the same wolves who once attacked and killed the sheep, now approached them submissively and could even be run off by the sheep! It was AMAZING!


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## FlyingQuizini (Oct 24, 2006)

Just found brief write up of the experiment. It was lithium chloride.

_To see if they could make coyotes stop killing lambs, the authors
first took a sample population of coyotes from different regions of
Montana where coyotes were notorious for killing shepherds"
flocks. They captured seven coyotes, five from the wild and two
from captivity. Presumably all of them loved to eat lamb meat. They
fed them tainted lamb, wrapped in fresh lamb hide. The meat itself
was not toxic to the long-term health of the coyotes that devoured
it. Instead, it was laced with lithium chloride, which causes
vomiting. One assumption made was that the lithium did not
actually affect the taste of the meat. Therefore, the coyotes
actually did consume the meat, and uniformly became sick after
eating the lamb. As a result of associating the meat with vomiting
the coyotes didn"t want to eat lamb anymore. On the contrary, they
ran away and hid from the lambs after having eaten the bad lamb
meat. Only weeks afterward did they begin to approach lambs as
prey when given the chance, and they didn"t devour their food as
they usually did. They tested their food one bite at a time, waiting
between bites to see if they got sick.

In fact, during an earlier experiment with hamburger tainted with
lithium the coyotes all became ill. After the coyotes associated the
hamburger with emesis, they didn"t even taste hamburger offered
to them. Instead, the coyotes urinated on the meat, turned over
their meat dish, or actually buried it. The experiment with
lithium-laced lamb was a temporarily successful one in that the
coyotes were weaned off of lamb meat._

Wish I could find the video. I saw it at a seminar with Bob Bailey.


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