To paint the picture: My parents have three dogs (13-year-old Gordon Setter, 5-year-old English Setter, 1.5-year-old rescue/mutt). I grew up with the 13-year-old and the 5-year-old, but after moving out of the house for college 5 years ago, I only ever see the dogs when I'm home to visit (they normally now live with my mom and stepdad). These instances I'm about to explain ONLY ever happen when we're all out of the house, or are upstairs sleeping.
The issue: my 5-year-old English Setter has always been very attached to his people (me, my mom, and my stepdad), and has a very sweet, calm disposition. Pretty smart too, he figured out how to stand up and press his paw on the ice machine on the refrigerator to get an ice cube when he was puppy. Never was a problem dog.
However, in the past 5-6 months, he's really causing mayhem for my parents and it's escalating.
1) - First, he learned how to open the heavy-duty, complicated mechanical garbage can in the kitchen and would knock it over to get into the trash. 2) - Then, we put the trash can into the bathroom and close the door, but we'd come home (or downstairs in the morning) the door would be open and trash down. 3) - Then, we switched to a smaller trash can to put on top of the fridge. He learned how to leap onto the counter to knock down the trash. 4) - And now that we put the trash upstairs whenever we leave the house, he goes on the top of the fridge anyway and knocks over whatever we have up there (potatoes, tinfoil, whatever) 5) - He also learned to open ALL the kitchen cabinets, and now we've lost track of how many times he's gotten into the cabinets and ripped up bags of flour, boxes of soup, etc.
So now whenever we leave the house we blockade all the cabinets with chairs, bring the garbage upstairs, make sure the bathroom door is open so he doesn't scratch it and ruin the door... you get the picture and see how inconvenient this is.
Not only is it inconvenient, but I'm really stumped as to why he's showing this behavior. My parents work from home, he plays with the other dogs, they have lots of toys, and they all go to the dog park multiple times a week (on top of us living on a lot of property so they have plenty of space to roam), so I really don't think simple boredom is the answer.
I also know that it's the English Setter because I've caught him in the act twice. Both times the mutt was hiding in his crate (I think he knew what was going on was bad, and wanted to go away), and the Gordon Setter is just so old and fragile that there's no way in hell it's him. (Though I'm sure he enjoys rummaging through the garbage once it's on the floor).
Sorry this is so long. I would love ANY and all help and insight. As much as we want to stop being inconvenienced in our daily lives, I want to know why my pup is acting so oddly.
Thank you!
Submitted December 31, 2017 at 10:11PM by tatertotski http://ift.tt/2CjgOOA Dogtraining
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