Hey all!

So I wanted to get some feedback, possibly advice if there is a method to curbing this behavior.. My 4 year old husky Kenai has a habit of jumping up on counters looking for food when we're not looking. We have a baby gate that is in the doorway of the kitchen so when we have all the pups inside they stay in the kitchen (saving our hardwood floors from the drool) until we bring them into the rooms when we all go to sleep.

We'll put him in the kitchen and "Kenai-proof" it as best we can but he manages to pop up on the counters and grab anything that looks like food to him, last night I came home and saw him in the kitchen with those little packets of silica gel on the floor that he grabbed off the counter, thankfully he didn't do anything more than pick it up and just drop it on the floor but a few weeks ago he jumped up when we left him in there alone for a very short time and he got himself some pizza and ate half of the other dogs food we were about to prepare.

I wanted to know if there is any training I can do to stop him from being like this or if we just have to make sure we're on top of our Kenai proofing game when we bring him into the kitchen? It's difficult to catch him in the act because he's quiet about it and we usually don't know until we go to the kitchen and see remnants on the floor, just worried that he'll grab something that'll hurt him.

Since we seem to be real slow in getting responses - presumably everyone out doing holiday 'stuff'.  I leave food on my counter (and my coffee table!) all the time.  My dogs know that unless I specifically give it to them (or allow them to pick up something I've dropped) that my food is mine.  

The only "training" per se that I've done is to correct them if a nose gets too close to something they shouldn't be nosing.  When I'm cooking and the dogs are often in the kitchen with me - waiting for me to drop something? - and a nose gets close to the top of the counter, they get an "Eh eh!" or "No"; if I drop something as soon as I realize it, my comment is "It's mine" or "get it" depending.

Even Sky, the newest of my three has been "counter trained"; she pulled a hot dog that I was going to use as a pill wrapper for her off the counter shortly after I got her, so I started leaving things where she could get them and telling her "No" when she looked like she was going to try to get it.  

This is a difficult thing to explain - dogs don't learn that fire's hot, for example, because we tell them it is; they learn it when they "burn a paw" so to speak (no, I don't burn my dogs, just an example).  By keeping everything off the counter (Kenai-proof) you're not giving him the opportunity to learn to leave it alone.  Did that make sense??