We never had to worry about counter surfing with Sampson, there are only two things that I know of that could possibly make Sampson get up and take something off the counter; filet mignon (and who could possibly blame him for that) and butter.  Yes Sampson absolutely adores butter!  In fact, that is the nickname that my sister and niece use for him.

Delilah on the other hand, gets a 10 in counter surfing.  Delilah will go onto the counter or even the stove for food.  I can’t tell you how many times I have been standing at the sink preparing something and turned around to find Delilah standing at the stove eating something that is cooking!  She has taken hotdogs and chicken right out of pans!  A couple of years ago I was doing some Sunday baking and Delilah ate 3/4 pound a butter, wrappers included!  I waited all day for her to get sick but would you believe she didn’t?

This picture is of Delilah after she got into the pancake batter, while she had already licked off most of the flecks of batter, if you look closely you can still see a few.

Batter Up!

So what can you do if you have a counter surfer?  There are a couple of things you can try such as “scat mats” which basically provide an electric shock or emit a loud noise when the pet touches or comes in close contact with it.  Or you can make your own deterrent, once I put some tasty treats on the back of the counter and then in front of the treats I placed a cookie sheet that had about 6 clean soda cans, that I had filled with pennies.  The thought process is when she goes up on the counter, she will knock the cookie sheet with the penny filled cans down and the noise will scare her enough to keep her off the counter.  Delilah knocked over one can and still got the treats. 

So when that doesn’t work, what do you do?  In my opinion,  a good offense is your best defense.  Don’t leave anything out that you don’t want your pet to eat, don’t tempt them and set them up to fail.  Because they will.  Therefore, we try to never leave anything on the counter or if we have to, we put it as far back as we can.  When I cook dinner I usually make enough for us to take lunches the next day, so in order to avoid having Delilah eat our lunches, we make them before we sit down to dinner. 

Naturally if I see her up on the counter, I tell her “No” and I make her get down, but realistically, Delilah will probably always have food issues and the best way to make all of our lives peaceful and stress free, is to take a little bit more time and make sure that we all win!

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