Lesley,

We used to have the food in containers in the kitchen but we caught him trying to chew the lids off and have moved them into the spare room (food containers had always been kept in the kitchen and Freddy & Wilma never bothered with them, and neither had Barney for the first 4 months we had him!!).  We now have them (have 2 containers cause have 2 different types of food cause of his intolerence to any food that costs less than £40 a bag)  just behind the door of the spare room, but in a place we can still see them from the living room to make sure he's not sneaked passed us and is helping himself!!  (as he has done on a couple of occassions when they were in a different part of that room and out of our view!!) 

This could be a part of the problem, but we really don't have anywhere else we can keep them!  We live in a bungalow, so can't hide them upstairs, and don't have any cupboards big enough we could hide them in - although we have a space we keep the "spare" bags of food in one of the hall cupboards, and he managed to get the living room door open and helped himself from that, after ripping one of them open!!  Partly our fault that one as we had left the sliding door of the cupboard slightly open!!

The spare room also doubles as my office at home so I am in and out of the room regularly throughout the day. It is also not the warmest room in the house, so we leave the door open slightly to "share" the heat from the living room, and he would probably just scratch it anyway!!

Barney isn't the brightest of our bunch (think he is your typical Grey ) and doesn't learn very quickly where anything's concerned!! (Dave, we got another duff one......)

We are considering a gate on the spare room which will also probably help with the "I vant to be alone" post in another section of the forum.  This will allow him to see but not touch

Chas

Hi Dave!

To be honest I hadn't even thought about worms!!  I've given him some tablets this morning - poor sod looked at the piddly amount of food in his bowl this morning and looked at Chas as if to say "and where is the rest"!  Mind you, he thought Christmas had come early when he got the rest of his allowance at tea time!

He is still a little underweight but we are feeding him the amount of food for a 25kg dog - which we think would be about right for him.  He may well be missing something from his diet (we've put him on Burns food which really seems to be working for him) - he has been known to eat his own poo (apologies if you're eating and reading this!), which I've read can be a sign that something is missing from his diet.  How long would you expect to wait to see an improvement in him if he has had worms?! If there's no great change in him scavenging, I will take him to the vet and get him to check him over.

Thanks again

Sharon