Hitcher has been posing a new problem recently and we're not sure what to do about it. We keep our kitchen garbage in a normal can in the cupboard under the sink, and he has discovered that it holds wonderful food scraps. We have tried baby locks - 2 different kinds - but he can still break in. Ours are at the top of the cabinet door, requiring that you press down on a piece of plastic to release the door. The other kind we have tried is also plastic and requires that you push two pieces of plastic together to pop the door open. Apparently, my 2 year old Treeing Walker Coonhound is smarter than the average 3 year old human because he can open both kinds.
We have resorted to moving the garbage to the back room (behind the baby gates that safeguard the litter boxes) each time we leave the house... which is a royal pain. Last week, Ted put a kitchen chair in front of the cupboard, but we still came home to trash, in addition to finding that he had eaten a chocolate cake retrieved from the ABOVE-counter cupboards; oh, and a loaf of bread. Yep, not sure how he got those cupboards open either. Next, Ted put a new 35 pound container of kitty litter in front of the cabinet, but he somehow managed to move that too, leaving garbage scraps strewn on the floor.
While it's super annoying to come home to garbage, the real concern is that he'll eventually eat something that makes him sick, so we have to figure something out. Until then, we'll be trying to remember to put it in the back room. Any suggestions?
3 comments:
Maggie did the same thing for, I hate to say it, a long time. Until she was almost 5. I had to resort to a bread box to store bread (this was her favorite thing to grab off the counter) and shove it way back on the counter. I still have to be aware of things left on the counter. The garbage thing I'm not too sure about, maybe locks on both the top and the bottom at the same time? She has a serious food adiction:), sounds like Hitcher might have the same problem. Good Luck!
don't know if it's an option for you, but a trash compactor always kept our dogs out of the trash. i think a compactor would be very hard for a dog to open. then again, i don't think our dogs were quite as ummm, "determined" as Hitch is!
we were able to keep kira out of the bathroom trash by simply putting it in the bathtub, (since the metal, lidded can with the step-pedal opener was not enough). i mean, what dog wants to get in the bathtub? :-)
Not that your dog isn't brilliant - but our eleven-month-old baby also opened the baby locks to our cabinet. I'm not sure which babies actually are thwarted by those locks. I think they're just another product profiting off first-time parents. Anyway, what worked for us was tying the two handles of the under-the-kitchen-cabinets together to each other. We got some elasticy thing like a little bungee-cord, and just looped it around in a figure-8 around the handles. Simple for human adults, but difficult for babies, and maybe dogs.
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