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Welcome to the world of weimaraners.
As you've discovered they love food and are extremely athletic so unless it's shut tight in something they'll likely get it. If you got together a large group of weim owners the list of things they've eaten that they weren't supposed to could fill a volume of books. It's not one of the breed's finer points.
The immediate thing to do would be to secure all food. She's obviously learned that there's goodies to be had and you don't want to reinforce that any further.
If she isn't already, I would recommend that you start crate training her immediately. It's more of a challenge with older dogs but it's far from impossible. Then she can simply be contained when you aren't around. If it's possible to lock her out of the kitchen when you aren't there.
Directly addressing the jumping up on the counter will inevitably require some form of punishment and if she's new to the family it's best to avoid that. Once she is well settled, comfortable, and bonded, there are products like scat mats or electronic colors that can be used to help curtail the behavior. Regardless of how you address it, I'd advise you to just get in the habit of not leaving food accessible to her. Working on overall discipline and manners should help as well. Particularly with having her do things you tell her to even if you leave the room, an example being down stay and extending that out longer and longer including leaving the room and requiring her to stay put.
Another thing you can work on is getting her into the habit of only eating when you allow her to. When you feed her, make her sit and stay and don't let her dig in till you say ok. Once she's got that down pat you can up the ante by picking up the food bowl and putting it closer and closer to right underneath her nose. I haven't pursued it that far with my weims as I've been in the habit of keeping everything secure for so long it's just second nature but I've seen dogs that people have done it with and when done properly they can put the food right up to the dogs muzzle and they will turn away. It's a training method they use with service dogs so they aren't snarfing down food since the blind person can't always tell. |
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