My departed doberman would steal, but she had an acute sense of guilt. If she’d done something wrong while we were out—like getting to the garbage—she’d put on an exaggerated display of being glad to see us, but would avoid eye contact and head for the door to be let out. She did this so often that it became her ‘tell’ and we’d know there was a mess somewhere.
One time, we came and she was really putting on an act. Lying on the floor, tail stump wagging, no eye-contact. We looked everywhere for what she’d gotten into—but nothing. Came back to her “What have you done?” Tail still wagging, still avoiding eye contact, looked guilty as hell, but of what? Then I noticed that her dog tag had gotten snagged in a loop of carpet. The carpet had trapped her.
LOL! My brother had a wonderful Doberman, gentle and obedient, who did crave the odd bit of non-food items now and then. He once ate an entire apron. The deed was discovered, however, when my brother noticed one of the apron sashes dangling from the dogs rear end. Unpleasant a task as it was, he then proceeded to pull a fairly intact apron from the dog’s behind. How the apron went through his entire digestive tract relatively unscathed, remains a scientific mystery, which died with the dog, when he expired, several years later.