Our Beagle is about 7 yrs old and a really great dog - except that we can't leave our food anywhere within her reach (she'll stand on her hind legs to get food) and she is always getting into our garbage cans.  We also have two Welsh Corgi's who are about a year and a half and they never get to our food or garbage cans.

Any suggestions for breaking her of this habit?  The kids will be eating at their table, get up to get some more to drink or go to the bathroom and if we're not watching, she'll jump up and get their food.  :(

Thanks much!


Rich

Sounds like a pretty normal beagle thing to me. Have you checked to make sure she's eating enough dog food? Maybe she's just hungry and knows where the food is. You could also try training her, or result to putting her in the crate, or outside during meal times.

 

Good luck!

Oh she's eating enough, she's actually overweight.  We've heard this is a typical beagle behavior, something we didn't know when we got her.  We'd LOVE to train her, just not sure how to best do that.  We could put her outside or in a crate, but that would be our last resort.  Our other dogs are fine and don't do this, we'd just like our beagle to behave the same.  :)

Thanks!

Expecting your beagle to act like your Corgis only creates more stress for you, and it's unfair to her. She's not a Corgi, she's a Beagle. She has different strengths, different weaknesses, they come from completely different lines and were/are bred for completely different reasons (corgis help herd, beagles track/scent and hunt). If you understand this food stealing as a normal beagle behavior (due to their highly, highly sensitive nose and love of food) you can begin to work on it with her.   

 

 

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply I expect her to act like our Corgis.  At first I wasn't understanding why they have no problem with this and our Beagle does.  I've since learned more about Beagles and why this is more of an issue for them.  What I don't know is how to work on correcting the behavior.  We tried the pennies in a soda can trick, but that didn't work and just scared the heck out of one of our Corgis - she ran upstairs and hid under a bed not wanting to come out.

Any suggestions?  Thanks much!

Put your bin where she cant get it :D

 

 

Yeah, sounds like normal beagle behaivour to me! mine did it too, but now we put the bin where she cant get it lol :P

 

Mine trys to get into EVERYTHING.

Hi, I hope you don't mind my suggestions.

The beagle's nose can sometimes get the better of em, but it's possible to give them some training to curb this behavior.

What you do will depend on how much time you have to invest in correcting your dog's behavior. The quickest and simplest fix is to follow the good advice given by others: change your behavior by keeping the food out of your beagles reach, and get trashcans that they can't get into. This works really well, but there maybe times where guests leave food out and the dog snatches it up.

If you have the time and patience, you can try to recreate the situation; have food out, and have the kids get up, and try to catch your beagle in the act. A solid "NO, BAD DOG" should be all that is required. Dogs are specialists, not generalists, so keep trying this, while slightly varying the situation, as well as moving further away, until your dog knows not to get up on people food unless explicitly told. It will take time but repetition is key. Make sure to reward your dog appropriately when she doesn't go for the kids food, (real chicken bits or bacon works great!).

It might also help to train your dog with sit and stay. If you need to leave the room, put your dog in the sit/down/stay position and be confident that you wont have a huge mess to deal with.

But do realize that this is a dog, and that mistakes will happen, but this training process can actually strengthen the bond between you and your beagle. Good luck!