Hey Dog Lovers,
Today we talk about a topic many owners struggle with but not many come forward owning up to unless a trainer experiences it themselves. It is a serious topic and more owners should come forward as this can be fixed to make their everyday lives easier.
Resource guarding by definition is the use of avoidance, threatening, or aggressive behaviors by a dog to retain control of food or non-food items in the presence of a person or other animal. Not all dogs will have this behavior issue and if it begins to prevent itself you want to fix the problem before it gets bad. It is solvable. It may take time but it can be worked through. In many animal abuse cases, you will see some dogs that have been starved who will guard their food or even their cages.
Punishment is typically the first thing most owners want to do to stop the behavior. However Punishment could suppress a dog’s warning signs (growling, snapping or showing their teeth) which we don’t want to do. However the dog’s negative emotions might still remain and the worst case scenario is that the dog will no longer give warning before biting.
This feeling can cause embarrassment but remember you are not alone and it is very common. Best thing you can do is get professional help. Through careful management of the environment and training we can teach them there is no need to guard.
You could use negative punishment (taking away something from the dog) to interrupt guarding as a way to prevent it from continuing being rehearsed, for example asking the dog to get off the couch when he is guarding it. Or you could stop handing out treats if the dog guards you from another dog… But punishing the guarding behavior by taking away things from the dog that he guards is not the solution to solving the guarding problem. The real solution is not allowing it to happen to begin with by using management and focusing on teaching the dog friendly social behaviors you do want him to do in the situations where he previously would exhibit guarding behavior.
Habituation is not the best plan of action for guarding. Habituation is when you expose the dog to things that make him slightly uncomfortable and he finally gets used to them because they happen all the time.
Some people feed their dogs really close together in hopes of the dogs getting comfortable eating together but it can actually make the dogs more stressed at meal times and wolf down their food rather than relax.
Letting dogs create a pecking order can have the reverse effect. The more a dog guards the more he can create negative associations with the situations he guards in. For dogs who guard space they can start to guard entire rooms as well as not want to let the other dog come in from outside. Instead of allowing the dogs to “train” each other… I suggest training them how you want them to interact, by training situational behaviors, like leaving other dogs alone when they are eating and instead training them to look to you for guidance as to how to interact with each other.
The solution: Prevent guarding and create a behavior modification plan
1 Write a list of the situations where guarding behaviors occur.
2 Use management to prevent guarding in those situations.
3 Train reliable cues that have a positive association to interrupt guarding
4 Train default situational behaviors.
5 Create training setups to condition a positive emotional response
Reach out to me and I would be happy to go over each of these in more.
Guarding can come back no matter how you train – Use management and prevention when needed
REVIEW:
- Get help -Work with a veterinary behaviorist or trainer who doesn’t use intimidation to train so you can stay safe and get help setting up a training plan.
- Make a list of all the scenarios in which guarding happens.
- Create a Management and Prevention Plan to prevent guarding from occurring in these situations outside of training sessions. Create a safety protocol to prevent accidents and injury.
- Learn what guarding looks like and be observant.
- Train emergency behaviors to interrupt guarding before it starts or interrupt it after.
- In training sessions teach your dog what you do want him to do in different social scenarios.
- In training setups work on building a positive emotional response to situations your dog has a tendency to guard in by breaking the training up into small achievable steps by separating the triggers and adding them together systematically.
- Know that it could always come back due to regression in a new scenario, stress, arousal, pain or illness. Be prepared for it.
If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you would help spread it by email to a friend, on social media or even word of mouth! Thank you so much!
