# Do your dogs do bad things behind your back?



## Pareeeee (Sep 29, 2009)

Because mine does. It's actually amazing how smart they are, but I want her to stop. You tell her 'no' for a plethora of things, as soon as you look away, she does it.

Like just now I have told her to stay on her chair - I turned around and started using the computer and I heard a noise - there she was, off her chair head down sneaking away behind the other furniture. She KNOWS she's not supposed to, or she wouldn't be sneaking away like that...She does this kind of stuff ALL the time, especially with 'stay'. Sometimes I think she genuinely forgets that she was told to stay. Other times you see her slowly moving away from the 'stay' spot - pulling herself along with her front feet like an invalid...(she thinks you won't notice she's moving if she does this...)
I always say "NO!" and make her go back to where she was supposed to stay and give her the "stay" command.

Say she is licking or chewing on something she's not supposed to. I tell her "no" and she stops...I turn my head (still looking from the corner of my eye, she doesn't know that) and she immediately starts licking or chewing that object. As *SOON* as you look at her she *IMMEDIATELY* stops, because she KNOWS she's not supposed to be doing that.

She also tries to steal food items off say the coffee table, etc. behind your back. She isn't as bad at doing that anymore, but I still don't trust her.

How in the WORLD do you stop behavior that happens _behind your back!?_

Thanks in advance for any replies!!!!!!!


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## winniec777 (Apr 20, 2008)

Our dog seems to enjoy doing bad things right in front of us a whole lot more. :0

Dogs do bad things when we're not looking because they learn something bad happens when they do them in front of us. It takes a lot of patience to teach a dog to be trustworthy both when we're around and when we're not. The key is not overreacting and being harsh with them because that only reinforces the notion that they better wait until you're not looking to do what they really want to do, which is steal stuff, chew, potty, etc. Dog is not being willful or disobedient - just smart!

Our puppy nearly drove us nuts with her constant stealing and other antics. We just tried to keep our cool and redirected her and rewarded her for good behavior. It may sound strange, but praising & treating a dog for just lying there calmly works! She soon learned that she got something great (our attention, a treat, a toy, a walk) faster if she just patiently waited vs. trying to get our attention with bad behavior. So when she was a puppy, I could get through an uninterrupted 2-4 hour stint working on the computer and she was perfectly behaved because she learned that she would be rewarded for taking a nap or quietly playing with a toy while I worked. 

Does that make sense? I do know that saying "NO!" or shaking a penny can (dumb advice we got from one trainer) or doing other things that startled her did not work at all. Calm redirection and well-timed rewards worked a lot better. Takes paying real close attention to the dog, though. You have to grow an extra pair of eyes and ears to keep up with the little monster. At least that was our experience.  And she grew calmer as she matured, too.

EDIT: I'm editing this to add that I didn't mean to sound like we never corrected her. We did, badly at first (penny can), and then learned how to do it so that we got the point across without startling her or being overly loud or excitable ourselves. She would hear "Uh!" or "Ooops!", and then we would redirect her, followed by a quick reward for a good behavior. Teaching her commands like wait and leave it and drop it helped a lot, too.


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## KBLover (Sep 9, 2008)

Wally sometimes sneaks into the kitchen to sniff the floor (he's not allowed in the kitchen) and I can hear him running back on the floor when I come up or down to the area. 

The only way to stop it, imo, is to condition the "right" behavior so strongly that he does it anyway. 

When I "catch" him going into the kitchen, I'll take time to do more shaping of him stopping on the boundary line before the kitchen. The advantage of shaping is that the dog is doing it on his own from the start. He's not relying on someone cuing him to stop and/or tell him what to do instead. He's building his own habit from the start and getting rewarded for it at the same time, building up both conditioning of response and the desire/initiative to do it on his own because the situation is there ("I'm coming up on the kitchen, I need to stop and lie down here.")

Now, I think he's got it. My mom spied on him one time and Wally thought about going in, but he stopped on his own. He considered going in as he was sniffing from a distance and still standing, but he lied down in front of the kitchen. She was going to try to catch him by spying like you were doing, but he did the "right" thing. He even refused a recall during some in-the-house practice because I was standing in the kitchen, he "tap danced" right at the boundary, then started barking LOL

So I think the question to answer is less "how can I punish what I can't personally catch?" and more "how can I condition the behavior I want more strongly?" 

So in your case - if she's still chewing on the unwanted item, what behavior would you rather her do when she sees the item? Answer that, then condition that. Lots of practice, repetition, generalization, etc, of getting that behavior in response to that object in the environment. In a sense, the object is going to become the cue for this behavior. See object on floor -> offer behavior "to" the object.


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## winniec777 (Apr 20, 2008)

^^^^^^ This. A much better explanation! I wish I was a whole lot better at it.....


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## Elana55 (Jan 7, 2008)

Most broken cues are due to us not being 100% consistant about requiring the dog to obey the cue every time. Your dog is breaking a stationary command (sit.. even tho it is on the chair.. the location is not important). Do you have her sit on the floor or anywhere else and then when she wanders off think that is OK? Sit means sit until the dog does, you release the dog (have you trained a release command?) or you tell the dog to do something else. 

As to other inappropriate behaviors.. think about it.. how often have you simply not gone in and redirected the dog to do what you asked (be it redirecting her to chew on the "right" toys or laying on the floor at your feet and the phone rings and so she gets up and wanders away before you give her a release word). 

Just think about it. I could be wrong.


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## JiveDadson (Feb 22, 2010)

Dogs have no concept of "should." Dogs do what they want. The trick is to teach them to want what you want. When the dog waits until you are not looking before she does something, it may just indicate she knows you will react badly toward her if you see it. She might not know that "stay" is in effect when you leave. www.youtube.com/kikopup has a good video about teaching "stay."

Negative training is too hard for me. I have not said, "No" to my dogs for 11 months. Rarely I have to stop them from doing something dangerous, like eating a dried chicken bone found by the sidewalk. That happened today. Zoot gave it up without protest. I have trained them to know if they let me take something from them, I will replace it with something better. They are getting very, very good at "stay." When I release them, they come running like crazy, to get the treat they have earned.


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## lil_fuzzy (Aug 16, 2010)

Yeah, I always get suspicious when they go quiet for more than 5 seconds. I have walked in on them jumping around on our bed, ripping up their own beds, ripping up toilet paper and cardboard etc.

Last night I walked into the bathroom and found them helping themselves to the litter tray in there (the door is supposed to be closed during the day but they must have opened it). There was poo everywhere. They had eaten some, and the rest they had smeared all over the floor and thoroughly into the bath mat. I was livid. I have never been so angry with them, and it took a LOT of self control to not scream at them. They didn't even have the decency to look ashamed of themselves, they just sat there looking up at me as if they had just had the time of their life.

The reason I had gone to find them was to do some training, but after that I was so angry with them I couldn't do any training, and the puppy was put away in his crate for the night (1 hour early) and my adult dog was ignored until this morning.


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## KBLover (Sep 9, 2008)

JiveDadson said:


> Negative training is too hard for me. I have not said, "No" to my dogs for 11 months.


Same here - I'd rather just teach what I want than have to go about correcting/redirecting him constantly. If I have to do that, I haven't taught what I want well enough.


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## FilleBelle (Aug 1, 2007)

My big dog will tip over the bathroom trash and spread the contents around the house if I am not home, so I close the bathroom doors before I leave. My little dog sleeps on the couch when I'm gone, but I'm not bothering to correct this. The only reason dogs aren't allowed on the furniture is because I don't want them bothering me or my guests when we're trying to relax. If Pumbaa's on the couch when the dogs are home alone, then she's not bothering anyone!

If I were home when these behaviors were occurring, I would take the time to train positive alternatives so that I could relax on my couch in a trash-free environment, but since they don't actually effect me, I am content to manage/ignore them.


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## silhounet (Feb 22, 2011)

I had similar experience before. My dog pissed the whole family off by doing bad things while we could not see. :frusty: My way of handling this was to build up the dog's habit to do the opposite - which is the right thing - by rewards; and punish whenever I spotted anything. It takes time but it's effective.


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## LynnI (Mar 27, 2010)

Wow, sounds like a untrained dog that is being expected to work beyond whatever training it has had and also being set up to fail. And the rest sounds like a lack of management. To be blunt, train the dog with realistic expectations and be fair. And no she doesn't know and why on earth would any animal do anything to deliberately to piss us off when the outcome is negative to them?


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## mandymmr (May 22, 2009)

my Doberman does 1 bad thing and he KNOWS he is being bad...lol He LOVES sticks of butter...so when I am thawing them out he sneaks in and grabs them off the counter. That is the only thing he does that is persay "bad". And when I walk into the kitchen he takes off like a bat out of hell cause he KNOWS...lol

I have even moved the butter wher I think he can't reach it...but he still ends up getting it!


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## KBLover (Sep 9, 2008)

mandymmr said:


> my Doberman does 1 bad thing and he KNOWS he is being bad...lol He LOVES sticks of butter...so when I am thawing them out he sneaks in and grabs them off the counter. That is the only thing he does that is persay "bad". And when I walk into the kitchen he takes off like a bat out of hell cause he KNOWS...lol
> 
> I have even moved the butter wher I think he can't reach it...but he still ends up getting it!



LOL, I think Wally wishes he was taller so he could do stuff like this 

He's a butter fiend too.


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