Graaaaaaaaah

OMG! He did it again!! I am going CRAZY. Today Sam emptied the paperbin in the bathroom FOUR (!!!) times. :bang:
And he know its a Big no-no! He looks sooo amazingly guilty when I yell at him. I just told what happened (see general galery) and now he did it again. Idon't quite know what to do next?. Apparently telling him 'no' doesn't work. I'm sure he knows he's not allowed to do it. But I think he gets away with it a lot of the time. Someone here at home never closes that door after him/her so Sam can get in :swear: He chews on everything that's in it and also swallows a lot of the content : tissues, little plastic wraps, but also the stuff we women need when we have our period :yuk:
Yesterday he had a swollen tummy for the whole day, I was so worried!! He probably had eaten something that wouldn't go trough. I told myself I'd go to the vet today but apparently it got out. He's nicely slim again.
Mostly I find him doing that at most once every two days, but now four times!
Someone any advise? We have no other place for the bin than on the floor so he has easy acces, and I figured it wouldn't take him long to learn how one with a cover (you know, one that flips open with a pedal) works.
I hate to punish him!!! really, the look in his eyes is devastating, it tears me up!
h*lp

My dogs taught me long ago to MOVE the trash bins out of their reach. ROTFL-- I don't know who is training whom.

Do you think it might be easier to retrain the humans? Maybe to help the forgetful ones if you put a sign on the door with a reminder:

KEEP THIS DOOR CLOSED

In the right language of course, English might not help the issue much.

Whatever is in the paper bin is too tempting for Sam to resist. He probably cannot control the urge.

For what it's worth, here's my advice:

A) Make sure the bathroom door is closed at all times

B) If that's not an option then get a garbage can that you have to step on to open

C) watch him very closely. Even if it takes keeping him on a leash, don't let him out of your site.

Sorry you're going through this and good luck ~ I know it's a pain in the butt. This morning Kosmo took off with my glove and I said "AHH AHH" very loudly and "bring it back" LOL and he did! :yikes He came back to me glove in mouth and I said drop it.. and he did! :yikes And of course then he manipulated me out of being mad at him and I gave him a big hug and good boy but still! :yikes Repetition is the key - watch Sam more closely and catch him in the act

Good luck! :flwr:

The only suggestions I can think of are to move the wastebasket, place it up high onto a vanity or to even place a baby gate across the bathroom entrance. Maybe place a sign on the bathroom door to remind others to shut the door as they leave.

We had similar problems with our beloved Charley and two teens....they had to place their waste basket on the dresser.....along with the laundry that he loved to chew to bits!

Mary Alice has only once "attacked" my daughters' wastebasket....it infuriated my daughter, but it's up to her to keep it out of the doggies reach.

When Mary Alice first came, we had left some kitchen garbage in a bag on the floor.....we were gone for 1/2 hr and we found the garbage strewn throughout the house....she was wagging her tail, so proud!!!

Now it goes directly out to the bin.

It's a doggie thing and the only cure is to remove it or shut a door!! ;D

Aren't they precious?? LOL

I think you're gonna have to remove the bin :roll: We can only have pedal bins in our house or Maxx will empty them. He regularly goes in the kids' rooms and tips their waste bins over and shreds the contents, eating whatever takes his fancy :roll: Luckily it's never anything more than a sweet wrapper or some old chewing gum :grnyuk:

IMHO it is the person who is not closing the door who needs to be punished. You are not going to be able to teach him unless you catch him in the act and re-direct him. He probably needs to still be confined to a smaller area when you are not watching him. Also, make sure he has lots of other things to play with and chew on. BTW I have an almost two year old Cavalier and a little over two year old Clumber (and if you think Cavaliers chew you have never been owned by a Clumber Spaniel!). I still do not let them have full access to the house except for very short periods of time. Probably will be another year before I think they are totally trustworthy. They are both well-trained, very laid back dogs, but they are young and they love to explore, retrieve and chew. It is just asking for trouble and conflict to put temptation in their way. It is less cruel to restrict them to limited areas of the house if they are not right with me than to end up being angry because they caused damage to property and/or possibly to themselves. Puppies are hard work. Good luck to you!!

arasara said:

This morning Kosmo took off with my glove and I said "AHH AHH" very loudly and "bring it back" LOL and he did! :yikes He came back to me glove in mouth and I said drop it.. and he did! :yikes And of course then he manipulated me out of being mad at him and I gave him a big hug and good boy but still! :yikes

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He does that too!! I just have to say 'well...' severely and he comes to me with whatever is in his mouth at that moment and drops it in front of me, sits down and looks very guilty :lol:

I think I'm getting another bin, maybe a smaller one that we can put higer or something. The baby gate is not an option, my dad wouldn't like it!
Thanks a lot for your advise guys!!

Teaching a dog not to get into an wastebin is in my opinion, a 'waste' (no pun intended, really...) of time and you might as well roll a large stone up a hill. :lol: A bin is full of everything a dog likes -- things that smell like the people they live with, paper they like to shred, things we'd rather they not find but which are fascinating to them... :yuk: It just ain't gonna happen! This is exactly like expecting a dog to ignore an open plate of food, or open bin of scraps in the kitchen.

I'd suggest getting one of those tall heavy bins with a lid, like the Brabantia one, that are too tall to access easily. Or if this could still be knocked over, instead of a bin on the ground, place a receptacle on a shelf in the bathromm that refiuse can go into and then emptied regularly into a large bin.

The bigger concern here is that things that go into a bathroom or kitchen bin can KILL a dog. -- medications, chemicals used to clean faces, wash counters or floors, foodstuffs that are poisonous to dogs... this is the human's responsibility to make such things inaccessible. Don't risk the health and even life of your dog expecting it to do things that are nearly impossible to train. Then that taken care of you can focus on regular obedience!

ppotterfield said:

He probably needs to still be confined to a smaller area when you are not watching him... I still do not let them have full access to the house except for very short periods of time. Probably will be another year before I think they are totally trustworthy... It is less cruel to restrict them to limited areas of the house if they are not right with me than to end up being angry because they caused damage to property and/or possibly to themselves.

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Ditto. Privileges need to be earned. More freedom is one of those earned privileges, imo. I'm STILL working on this with my two dogs...and four teenagers!

I have to double the vote for using cans with lids on them. I have small step-on cans in all my bathrooms and I love them because Chester can't get into them PLUS it hides the less-than-lovely bathroom trash and looks very tidy. I have 2 of these $19.99 rattan-covered ones from Bed Bath and Beyond and I love them: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=13857075



I don't know if you have Bed Bath & Beyond in Belgium, but I'm sure you can find something similar...they're very common.

Best of luck!

All of the trash cans in our house are now under sinks in the cabinet.

Just part of having a dog I am afraid.

Karlin said:

The bigger concern here is that things that go into a bathroom or kitchen bin can KILL a dog. -- medications, chemicals used to clean faces, wash counters or floors, foodstuffs that are poisonous to dogs... this is the human's responsibility to make such things inaccessible.

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!!indeed, once I found halfly chewed antibiotics on the floor! Luckily he didn't ate it, apparently it didn't taste that good. I also didn't think of the fact that I CAN decide where he goes and I can make sure he stays with me! That never came to me, we've let him go everywhere since he is pottytrained!
Well it's going to be a time to learn a lot again for my little boy, and we're going to be a lot togheter since I also need to work on where exactly he goes potty. He prefers the terras to the gras, he does go outside but not where he is supposed to. So I'll make sure I get out with him every time and reward him when he does in the grass and not on the tiles.

Same here. The bathroom trash is under the sink in the cabinet and the kitchen trash can has a step-pedal and a very heavy lid. And lets just say I have to invest in a super thick cat litter box with a lid and a door and it faces the wall to where only Howie can get in it. :yuk:

We have a waste basket that goes under our sink (in the bathroom) for any personal hygiene products and such that we don't want our pup to get. I have noticed from past experiences that personal girlie products tend to attract dogs (probably the same reason a dog likes to sniff peoples bits, dog noses up the patooties can be alarming). Putting them away in a cupboard and putting a child safety latch on it (some dogs can open cupboards) seems to work just fine!

Well Ill be~ Here Ive had my trash can on top of my dresser for the past two years.....Duahhhhh...never thought of just putting it under the sink and using all those leftover baby latches that sales girl told me I had to have !!!!! :roll:

Thanks for the tip!

One of the best things I learned in puppy kindergarten...yep the class was really more for me than for Jake....was sometimes there are situations you just have to manage rather than try to train. And the trashcan was definitely one fo them!!

Maxwell & Me - I think we must both belong the same "slow" club. Duh, took me a year to figure....hmmmm....maybe if I put the trashcan inside the vanity he can't get to it. Well what do you know...problem solved

If you decide to go with the step-on waste bin, be careful still! My Golden Retriever watched us use the step, and then he proceeded to step on it himself. So, he could still help himself to the bin contents whenever the mood moved him. :roll:

So, we have step-on waste bins but they face the wall so he can't step on the pedal and open the bin!

That's what I get for teaching him to think when he was a pup! icon_whistling

Oh Barb - dogs can be so smart, can't they. :shifty:

I used to have a Vizsla that never touched the kitchen garbage can. Life was good for 6 years UNTIL my sister moved in with me. She kept leaving the lid up and leaving really good stuff in there. Once he had a taste for it, it was all over. This was the tall model - so just his height and had a flip top, so he'd flip it open with his nose. Just like Karlin said before, I couldn't train him to stop or reprimand him enough to stop. I ended up turning the flip top towards the wall, so he couldn't get in the garbage.

I use the same garbage can now, but the Vizsla is gone and the cavaliers can't reach it. All the smaller garbage cans are under sinks inside cabinets so the little ones can't get at them.

Our lab went for the bathroom baskets every now and then well till 6 yrs old.

It's funny I just read this, because while out today I saw bathroom cans with lids on sale and was reminded of that.

This time, I concede - dogs like to go thro the bathroom trash - I can spend yrs trying again to train them not to, or just buy the cans and save myself a whole lot of time and stress! :lol: