Surf's Up, Dude!

Okay, let’s do a little visualization. I’d tell you to close your eyes, but that would make it hard to read this. So, keep your eyes open.

Imagine you work in an office (maybe you really do, which will make this easier). In your office there is a cupboard and you don’t know what is kept inside. One day, you decide to open the door and check it out.

Inside, you find a $10 bill! Cool, huh? You put the money in your pocket and think, “Wow, I’m glad I finally checked out that cupboard!”

Do you think you’ll look in that cupboard again? Of course you will! So, let’s say the next time you check the cupboard, you find a fresh slice of your favorite pie! Woo hoo! It’s a magic cupboard full of wonderful surprises! What a discovery!

After a good week or so of finding wonderful treasures, a coworker catches you as you’re opening the door. She shrieks, “HEY! Don’t open that cupboard!!” This scares the pants off you and you slink back to your desk.

Now, if you’re like me, you are not thinking, “I should never open that cupboard again.” Instead, you are thinking something more along the lines of, “I don’t like that coworker very much, and from now on I’ll be sure she’s not around when I open the cupboard.”

You check the cupboard often, but only find rewards sometimes. Do you think that finding nothing sometimes will stop you from checking all the time? Of course it won’t. Maybe you’ll even start checking the cupboard more often. Personally, I'd be checking it hourly (in case of cheesecake)!

How long do you suppose you would have to find the cupboard empty in order to stop checking it completely? Let’s say the cupboard was empty every time you checked it for thirty days in a row. Because of that, you forgot to look for a while.

Eventually, you would probably think, “Hmm, I haven’t checked the cupboard lately.” If you happened find a $100 bill this time, do you think you might go back to checking it several times a day?

Stay with me, I do have a point here. So, let’s say instead that you hadn’t found anything in the cupboard for several days AND every time you stood by the cupboard but didn’t touch it, one of your coworkers ran in and gave you a gift. In fact, the gifts you received for standing quietly far outweighed the treasures you had found in the cupboard! Wouldn’t it make much more sense at this point to never open the cupboard and instead stand quietly and wait for your gift?!

If you have a dog who counter surfs, meaning a dog who steals food or other items off of counter surfaces, then your dog’s experience might be very similar to the story above. The dog was probably walking through the kitchen at one point in time, minding his own doggy business, noticed a smell from above, checked it out and WOW!! He found a secret stash of varied treasures!

Why in the world would the dog NOT look for more treasure? Why would you have left the cupboard alone? It just wouldn’t make any sense to stop seeking treasure when you’ve discovered something so awesome.

If you decide to punish this behavior, you could end up in the same spot as the coworker mentioned above. Your dog might decide that you’re a killjoy and that all counter surfing missions should be conducted when you’re not around. I’m thinking you want something more than that.

If your dog doesn’t find any food to steal for a while, it doesn’t mean he’s going to stop looking, just as you would keep trying the cupboard.

If your dog ever found food again, it would prove that checking at least once in a while is worth it, because sometimes it pays off. This is the same theory that keeps people spending money to pull the lever on a slot machine, and the same thing that keeps my husband interested in Salmon fishing. You can lose over and over again, but THIS time might be a winner! Every time you win, it makes the desire to take a chance that much stronger.

Likewise, every time you lose, that desire decreases a bit. But it takes a lot more losses to cancel out a win. A combination of losing at one game and winning at another is really the quickest way to get your dog to forget the first game.

If your dog NEVER (and I mean never, ever) finds anything good on a counter top, but instead is rewarded handsomely for merely sitting, lying or standing quietly in the kitchen, he will be more likely to forget the counter altogether and participate in the behavior that pays the biggest reward.

Dogs aren’t stupid. Most of them know that a piece of bacon in your mouth is worth two on the counter.