Re: Wierd Glove Fetish...

In Reply to: Wierd Glove Fetish...
Category:   Behavior Problems
Posted by:  Lucy's Mommy
Posted on:  February 25, 2003 at 11:28:55

: My Dog Lucy had her first birthday on January 13th. She is a well behaved, and well trained JRT. She has a wierd fetish with gloves. All kinds of gloves. If anyone's coat is hanging on a door knob, or over a chair she will stick her nose in the pocket and grab the glove. She also goes crazy when you put your gloves on, preparing to leave. She does this with everyone! She even jumps up and grabs my husband's work gloves out of his back pocket!! AAAAAHHH!
: Help! Got any suggestions??

Response:

Dear Lucy's Mommy,

I had to laugh when I read this. It brought back such a wonderful memory of our first terrier, Katie. :-)

Katie had a sock "fetish." (I like that term better then "bad habit caused by owners" -- LOL!) Like most pups, Katie liked to bite at our feet and rather then correct her, we decided to let her amuse herself by trying to take our socks off of our feet. Naturally, this led to her raiding the laundry basket, "attacking" family/friends who took off their shoes, us hiding behind closed doors to put our socks and shoes ON -- you get the picture.

Obviously, we messed up (!) but rather then constantly correcting her, we made it into a game with very specific rules. Essentially, we gave her permission to pull off our socks but ONLY when we were sitting on the floor in the closet; she then had to put the socks INTO the basket. Each time she would start the behavior, we would say "not now" and then go to the closet. We'd then say OK! to start the game and then praise her when she was done; we went through a LOT of socks that first week! The second week, we continued saying "not now" but didn't go the closet every time. By the end of that week, she stopped trying to take off our socks UNLESS we were where the game took place and not until we said OK!

Obviously (!) my advice is to turn this into a game that you all can have some fun with. Or you can just wait for winter to be over and hope that Lucy will just forget about her glove fetish.