Food and possession aggression – If your dog has ever growled at you when you’ve approached or touched him while he’s eating, chewing a bone, or playing with a toy, you might have a possession aggression problem on your hands. The good news is, if the possession aggression is the ONLY aggressive response your dog has, and he has no other anxiety-related issues, it can often times be fixed.
Before we start, keep two things in mind – the first is that we’re talking about aggression toward humans, not other dogs in the household. While actual fighting is not appropriate, it is normal for a dog to not want to share his goodies with other dogs.
The second point is that if your dog has ever bitten you, you’d be best off reading this article and then setting up an appointment with a professional to make sure you do these exercises safely. If there are other behavior problems going on, that would be another situation where you’d be best off consulting a skilled behavior counselor. The following is a guide for MILD aggression, but you don’t want to push your luck if the problem has already escalated.
The facts…
If you get into a fight with your dog over an item – you’re not likely to win. Our goal here is not to win a battle, but to counter-condition the dog and make him think your approach is a good thing.
Approaches from a further distance will elicit a more extreme response than approaches from a short distance. This also holds true for approaches straight-on vs. meandering or sideways approaches.
Unlike other training sessions, which should be short, resource guarding sessions should last longer. You’ll have more success with a half hour session than you will with a five minute session.
Changing bowls, changing feeding locations, and sometimes losing the bowl entirely and hand feeding can all be useful tools to rehabilitate your guarder.
Each person doing these exercises will have to start at the beginning – in other words, one person can’t do some work and have another person pick up where person number one left off.
Setbacks can be devastating to the process, so make sure you raise the bar slowly. We want Buster to succeed.
The bowl…
If Buster likes to be left alone while he eats his meals, here is an overview of the exercises you’ll want to work on.
Start off sharing the bowl. If you’re holding it, you’re maintaining possession, and although I’d recommend not talking to and not touching Buster at this point, he should do nothing more than stiffen his body and eat fast. (If, by the way, he tends to inhale his food, add a little bit of water and a large Kong toy or something to take up space and slow him down.) Share the bowl for a few days or a few weeks – until Buster’s body language is relaxed and his eating is a bit hurried but not frantic.
Now we’re going to add happy, quiet praise.
Next, place your hand on Buster BEFORE you offer the bowl, and continue the praise while you lightly touch his back or hindquarters.
You’re now going to progress to keeping one hand on the bowl and tossing tasty treats into the bowl with the other hand. Do this until you get a happy, expectant reaction. You won’t have a free hand to touch him, but you can keep up the gentle praise.
Now we’re going to stand up, put Buster’s bowl on the ground and toss treats into the bowl from a safe distance. Make sure that the bowl is large enough…we’re not going to have much success if you’re bouncing objects off of the dog’s face. As he gets more comfortable with this exercise, you can take a step back which will require that you take a step FORWARD to toss the treat to him. Progress to more steps back. By this time, he should be associating your praise with tasty snacks.
Continue the approaches, vary the distance and direction, and vary the level of treats. And remember, each increment I’ve gone over (adding praise, then adding a touch, etc) might take days or weeks. Don’t move on to the next level until you’ve made Buster comfortable with the level you’re working on.
The bones…
Just like with the bowl, you’re going to start off sharing the bone or toy. Make sure you’re starting with a mildly interesting bone…not Buster’s favorite item. Also think about what treats will be best to exchange the bone for.
Give the dog a few seconds to get a some chews in, then firmly but cheerfully say “drop it” and give him about one second to do so. If he does, reward. If he doesn’t, pull it out of his mouth (make sure your item is large enough to do this) – and reward! At this point, we just want him to think that giving up his stuff is good, whether he decided to do it on his own or not. If you reward consistently, he will then voluntarily drop after a few attempts. When he gets to this point, you can start to reward only the good drops. If you take it away or if he pauses, he just gets praise.
When he’s happily letting go and looking for his treat, you’re then ready to let him possess the bone. Keep him on a leash because the first thing he’s going to do is head for the hills! You might have to bribe him at first by showing him the treat, but again…that’s ok. He’s going to learn how the game works. After a few sessions, he’ll be tossing the bone at you and looking at your other hand!
You’re now ready to take a step up to the next favorite bone or toy and start over…
Found items…
If food on the street (or semi-food-like items on the street) is your problem, teach Buster to drop it using the above bone exercises. With enough indoor practice, hopefully you’ll say “drop it” on the street and he’ll do so without thinking twice. Just be sure to have a tasty treat on you for the first few times or he’ll quickly determine that he only REALLY has to drop it while he’s playing the indoor training game.
