My dog is eating everything what should i do

Thank you for the questions readers have been asking me. I love helping other dog owners to rear dogs and have a good personal relationship with their pets.

Last week I got this mail from one of the readers

Question: Hi! My name is Jenny and I am 32 years old working woman. We have a yellow color Labrador and she is very well behaved with us. She is a completely trained dog from a Labrador retriever training school. She eats her meal on time and patient about her meal but when we are not around her behavior changes to a different dog. We have chained her in the backyard or have to crate her when we went out because she would go to kitchen jump up on the slabs and eat things like coffee, bread, eggs, beans and anything that is in her reach. Things become messed up when she tears apart the garbage and last night she reached to my drawer to get the candies.

We live in a small house with my parents and they declines to chain her or crate her in the house. And with practice she became an expert artist in doing these type of things (once she opened a jar of jam that was in the center of the dining table without leaving any marks of her existence. She is a healthy dog(45-50lbs) and has 1 hour run 2 times a day. She has many dog toys to play with. We feed her 3 times a day. But I don't know how to deal with it as the dog is totally out of control when we are not at home. Please help because I don't want to loose her.

Answer: According to my opinion as a Dog behavior specialist these things can become more difficult if she would eat garbage which can result in infection which leads to health complications.

Putting her into crate or chaining the dog in the backyard does not work in most cases. Most probably when your pet steals anything she sees it as reward and maybe appreciating herself which I called "self rewarding".

Ensure that your dog is busy when you are not there ensure that someone is around and preferably keep her busy. As a precaution you need to keep all the eatables far away from her. Kitchen slabs should be clean with minimum clutter. Drawers must be locked full-time, does not matter you are at home or outside.

Another thing that you can do is when the food is around your dog, just hold the leash from top of the neck and pull it gently when she gets excited. This exercise will train her brain not get excited when she sees food..