I'm going to apologize in advance for the length of this reply
.
Chaser, I wish I had some easy answers for you but, we too have been having our share of serious troubles with Penny. I can only tell you what's been working for us so far and hopefully some of it can be of some use to you.
For your first scenario, the only thing that will work, imo, is to never ever let the dogs have a chance to get at food on counters, sinks, etc. If they only get lucky once a month, the fact that they do is extremely reinforcing and, you can bet they will keep trying (sort of how people get addicted to gambling). If they
never find food over a long period of time, the behavior will extinguish. You can teach a 'leave it' but, it really wouldn't help for those times you can't supervise. Penny doesn't take food but Lucky might on the odd occasion. We now put food in the oven to thaw. You can use a pantry, the microwave, a cupboard, etc..
For your second issue, which is obviously serious, both management and training are what's needed. I'll let you know what we do here at the moment.
Neither dogs are ever out in the yard unsupervised...and that doesn't mean we watch them through a window. We have to physically go out with them. Unfortunately, that means they are also never out at the same time as Penny now re-directs aggressively if anything excites her in the environment (whether it be negative or positive). So, what's working for us so far is that we try prevent her from getting to that point at all (but she's a little loopy so sometimes it can just be a bird in a tree that'll turn her into Cujo). If there's a dog, horse, people walking by, we try to re-direct her attention to us or even physically block her and then give her something else to do. We're fortunate that we have no neighbors in the back and both sides of the property are well covered so that the dogs can't see what's going on in those yards. For the front yard though, we're planting cedar along the fencing this Spring and will try to figure out something to cover the gates (we have a chain link fence). In your case with the Bassets, is there anyway you can block the visual access into their yard? Do the Bassets come right to the fence?
So, although stressful at times, the management is the easy part. The training part not so easy for me but, we have noticed improvement. We do a lot more recalls and, slowly try to build up Penny's tolerance to stressors and that's by reconditioning her to see them as positive things, not things she has to be afraid of or aggressive towards. I think in Chase's case this is what he needs too.
I'm going to pm stinkycat and millitntanimist as I believe they can explain the "how-to's" much better than I can.
One thing we tried that
didn't work, actually made the situation worse, was set down a whole bunch of new rules all at one time (we too thought that perhaps they were too spoiled). So suddenly
everything was NILIF, no dogs on the bed, furniture, etc. I can't tell you what a mistake that was as it only increased the stress and anxiety Penny was feeling. However, our issue was that Penny started attacking Lucky and Nukka whereas that's not the case between Chase and Kailey, thank dog.
Increasing their exercise did help dramatically, especially for Lucky. We started cycling with them (20 minute run is the equivalent of a 1 hour walk) and Lucky needs about 45 minutes to an hour of running per day. Problem now is, Lucky pulled the bike right out form under me and I got hurt
. Dh is the one who takes him now as he outweighs me by 100lbs and Lucky isn't strong enough to unbalance the bike. Does Chase lunge after other animals/people when you're walking with him? Is your dh able to cycle with him (using an appropriate attachment of course) for about 20-30 mins. per day? If not, is there any way you can hire an experienced dog walker? I know without the exercise, it would be hell here...I'm already dreading next Winter
.
Oh, another thing, we no longer feed our guys out of bowls
at all. Everything gets stuffed into their Kongs and is frozen/semi-frozen so that it takes them between 30mins. - 2 hours to eat each meal. It keeps them super busy and prevents them from getting into trouble out of boredom.
I hope some of this helps you. I know too well what it's like to have everything suddenly go to hell in a handbasket
.