Well this morning Hogan learnt the art of counter surfing

Not happy! Out of the blue, he jumped up to the chopping board and grabbed my ready made cheese sandwhich off the side!!

I took him by the collar, put did down on the floor and sternly said "NO " and put him in his crate.

Half an hour later, I walk into the kitchen to find him up there again. This time I took him by the collar shouted louder "NO " and lifted him up by the scruff of the neck, carrying him to his crate, and put him back in there.

I hate being aggresive with him but I want to nip this behaviour in the bud before it become a habit - I can't have him stealing food as quite often prepared food in left on the worktops ready to be cooked etc, or the children leave things on the sides.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Yes.  I used an e-collar very successfully to stop countersurfing and digging -- the only two bad habits that my dog seemed to have.  Notice the last sentence was all past-tense.  I got an e-collar about 2 months ago (Wolfgang was 9 months at that time).  I got some training and did my own reasearch and, I'll bet I've had to correct him with the collar less than 10 - 12 times since I've had it.  Both counter surfing and digging were ELIMINATED withing 2 - 3 days.  Of course if there is something like a dishtowel hanging down over the counter -- it's fair game.  I don't enjoy correcting my dog, however, I see this as the lesser of two evils.  Wolfgang is so tall that he can not only reach the middle of our counters, but all the way to the back.  My father-in-law was staying with us for a couple of days just before Christmas and had put his pill case at the very back of the counter, Wolfgang jumped up and got it -- thankfully my wife got it out of his mouth immediately -- no telling what the pills would have done to him if he had swallowed them.  Additionally, God knows what Wolfgang could unearth in my back yard -- I've found pieces of broken glass and "little green army men" when planting my garden.

I am sorry to say from my experiences, would never trust a GSP alone in the kitchen with a piece of ham on the counter unsupervised no matter what training method you have used. Did not lose 22 blueberry muffins my first week with Rescue Rocky without being quickly educated to the GSP counter surfing abilities.

This is what can happen not supervised even after counter surf training.

Breaking a dog of these things is all about point of association. Thats the idea behind the e collar or mouse traps.

First rule, Nothing bad should ever come from your hand. I don't want to seem judgemental but some stuff needs to be fixed.

Never punish the dog by crating him. The crate is a haven. If you punish him by putting him in it he will soon think its a bad place for when he does bad things.

There are times we all want to grab the dog by the collar. Thats the bad hand. The dog wont know any better and when you reach for him he will start to shy away.

Point of association works ( with mouse traps or an e collar,  with that little guy I would use traps) by the dog going on the counter the trap going off and him reacting to the noise. Now he knows if he goes up on the counter bad things happen up there so " I'm never going back there"! You'll see his eyes go wide and black and you can then be the good guy and sit on the couch and comfort him.

Get some traps tape cardboard to the part that kills the mouse so it doesn't hurt the dog and makes a nice loud slapping noise and sit back and watch

ROTFLMAO thats awesome balance! Gotta love em.

i am by no means and expert but im not sure if i agree with the whole bad hand thing...an alpha dog will correct another dog with their "bad mouth" to gain respect..of course you do not want to hurt your dog

I never had a counter surfer until I got Ringo. He is the counter surfer extraordinaire and has an uncanny ability to know when something good is up on the counter, exactly where mom has put it to try to keep it out of his reach, and the exact moment when I am not paying attention. That said I tried the correction method and every time I thought we were making progress, he would find something else interesting on the counter. So it was the 2 steps forward and 3 steps backwards routine. On top of that he taught Halo (who had never counter surfed) the delights of counter surfing. So, I went from no counter surfers, to one counter surfer, and then to two counter surfers. At that point it became even harder to catch the stinkers in action because I swear they would plan their assault. Anyway, I finally reached my tipping point and used the ecollar on both of them (they had already been conditioned and are older so I wasn't worried about that issue). That has taken care of the problem, but I still set them up once in a while just as a refresher.

For Hogan if you don't want to do mousetraps you could also try taking empty soda cans and putting some rocks in them so they rattle (but not too many rocks as you still want them tippy) and putting them around on the counter. The dog jumps up and knocks the cans over and is startled, same as with mousetraps. Good luck, this is a hard one because they get a reward when they surf.

Don't beat yourself up and dont feel bad, go pet the puppy Your learning and the dog is learning. Find what works for you. It's all trial and error. I hope I didn't make you feel bad that wasn't my intention, all I can pass along is what works for me, that may not work for you or anyone else. Just don't beat yourself up. If I upset ou I apologize.

Yes calm is good not sure about the whole respect thing your talking about. The reason calm is good is beacuse it keeps the dog from getting tense when your trying to teach it smoething. Not sure about the physiological stuff behind that but the psycology makes sense to me. Not sure how respect ties into it. Right now that dog respects you, when he starts to get a bit fiesty I'll show you another trick for reasserting your alpha status but he's to young  for that   My dog and I work together he knows when he does well I'm happy and that makes him happy. It's really very co dependent when you look at it. That dog lives to make you happy That all starts with trust and love. I'm a big fan of that school. You can be strong and assertive without being heavy handed. Not saying you are but I know folks who think you need to be  heavy and firm to get cooperation. I don't believe it. Thats just me. I see it all the time at various clubs. I watched a guy wacking his dog with a e collar so hard the dog was yelping, It got to the point where I had to leave the feild and yes I use an e collar.

When I get frustrated, and we all do! I usually just take a time out. Then we play and do some happy puppy time. Revisiting an issue does no good because they have no idea what the you are talking about If you can't correct something instantly then don't. You'll have another opportunity to get back to it trust me on this one.

Relax he's a tiny little puppy don't expect to much. He's gonna chew pee destroy and surf. Thats what they do.