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Sigh.. possession aggression...

12K views 133 replies 20 participants last post by  my boy diesel 
#1 ·
Hello all.. I am just a little miffed tonight. My baby boy of 2 years got extremely possessive over a beef rib bone with me. He has never, ever, ever been food aggressive/possession aggressive with us. I gave him a rib bone from my birthday party earlier, when I went down to pet him/love on him he tensed up and growled at me.. he has never ever done this before.. he is well trained, socialized, and an all around good guy.. he is unaltered and just turned 2 a week ago.. could his hormones be a possibility?
 
#38 ·
I also don't find the trade up game to really make sense. You can take away a toy to give a biscuit, but it doesn't help if the toy is of higher value to that particular dog. What we might think is high value to them might not mean squat to them. For example The highest value thing for my female GSD is her rock, she has had this rock since she was a pup. She found it in the bushes. It's a bigger rock, when I moved I took her rock with us. She just loves that rock and nothing else matters. I would not have put a rock in my rotation of trade-ups:eek:
 
#64 ·
I also don't find the trade up game to really make sense. You can take away a toy to give a biscuit, but it doesn't help if the toy is of higher value to that particular dog.
It does if you reward with a treat for giving up the toy, and then you give the toy back. Isn't that how you'd teach an "out" anyway? Mark and reward for the out, and then let the game continue? That's all trading games are. :) I do it with a variety of things - balls, bones, tug toys, etc. Puppy learns that giving up something makes other good things happen, puppy feels comfortable with me nearby while chewing a bone or bully stick, puppy learns to trust me and doesn't feel the need to guard valuable resources from me. In fact, puppy (like Halo!) may decide that it's fun to bring you things to trade for other things, and make a game out of it.
 
#40 · (Edited)
I've never had to deal with it. The trade up game just doesn't make sense to me. How do you determine what is more high value to your dog? Maybe one day it's this toy, the next day it's this toy, maybe one day it's some kind of food? Dogs aren't that predictable.

Here is a scenario....
What if the dog got a rib bone and you needed to get it away so the dog doesn't eat it and hurt itself, you have nothing else to give, how do you get that bond away from the dog that is snarling and growling at you?
 
#44 ·
This is exactly how it should be, but there can always be an emergency situation and something that is dangerous for the dog needs to be taken away. My sister had a St Bernard she was fostering, great dog normally. I was watching him and he got out of the yard and ran to the middle of the road where there was a dead rabbit. He turned into Cujo. That was one of the only times I was afraid of a dog. You wouldn't believe the growling, teeth, drooling and lunging I saw that day. All I had was a broom and I had to guide him off the road with that dead rabbit. I couldn't get it away from him. My sister found a home a very short time later. He got sick and died, it was from something that that dead rabbit was carrying(disease). Never again will I go through that:(
 
#45 ·
And again I say, if your dog has known guarding issues and you don't strictly enforce and let the dog get ahold of stuff then you shouldn't own a dog. It's called training. You don't trade just to trade.

I mean if the dog has growl snapped at you before, who would leave a rib bone out? Who would leave anything out that a dog can potentially hurt itself with?

Pretty simple if you ask me. You say you've never dealt with this so how would you hypothetically deal with this since trading seems like a novel idea to you?
 
#46 ·
Read my story about the St Bernard. It took one time and the dog dying for me to learn. As a pet owner you should know that accidents happen, dogs can get into stuff. Someone could throw a bone into your yard. You act like dogs are perfect and won't take an opportunity. I don't care how trained they are, they are opportunist and if someone doesn't get that, they shouldn't own a dog.
 
#50 ·
There is a big difference in training dog from a young age to defer to you and not have any issues if you take something from then, and a 2 year old dog suddenly showing guarding signs.

A 2 yo dog, has probably been showing some kind of sign, probably unrecognized, but still there. Problem being, that dog is now big enough to take you down. So extreme caution must be taken. Way more so than in a puppy.

If an adult dog of mine displayed this, in the moment I would do a trade up, or a call away, anything to get the dog to willingly leave the object. Then work on where the breakdown in our relationship is and fix that. Through NILF, training, deference work.

It's not an issue that has ever happened to me with a dog I have raised. But I did have foster that was violent about food. It took an enormous amount of work to get that dog to trust me and not show the behavior. It reared its head again in his forever home, and she did exactly as I recommended. She walked away, went into her kitchen and dumped food in a bowl. Dog came running! She put him outside, and picked up the bone. Then we worked on building the relationship. The behavior went away.


Training a pup and dealing with a full grown dog are different.


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#68 ·
There is a big difference in training dog from a young age to defer to you and not have any issues if you take something from then, and a 2 year old dog suddenly showing guarding signs.

A 2 yo dog, has probably been showing some kind of sign, probably unrecognized, but still there. Problem being, that dog is now big enough to take you down. So extreme caution must be taken. Way more so than in a puppy.
^This. For me, trading games are part of my foundation training with each puppy I bring home, to prevent guarding issues. Once I've established that trust, I don't find it necessary to constantly maintain it by continuing to trade stuff. I also do NILIF from the beginning so my dogs are constantly practicing deference behaviors as part of routine daily life - "house rules", if you will.
 
#51 ·
You say you've never had to deal with this so why are you even here giving advice?
for sure
i am always amused when people belittle a method proven to work just because
1 they have not dealt with the problem so
2 they have never used the method themselves so
3 they think that method is silly

and you arrived at that conclusion how?
 
#52 · (Edited)
I never said its silly, I said it reminds me of bribery and I'm not bribing my dog to do anything. I train my dogs not bribe them. And obviously training works and is a proven method.

AGAIN I'm asking someone to explain how the trade up works in certain situations. Not one person can answer my question? I don't find it to be a difficult question. I want to know how the trade up works in emergency situations. I did not give any advice, because again that kind if behavior is not allowed and worked in in the door with each dog. Now can someone just answer my question...what do you use to trade up with in an emergency situation if nothing is available?
 
#57 ·
This is what I would think would have to happen. It could be a really dangerous situation if the dog in the emergency situation won't let you near it. That is kinda why I think it should be considered more of a training thing versus a game of you give me that and I'll give you this. I really don't think they should expect to get something in return for giving something up. I think that it should always be a direct approach so the dog learns to understand and learns what is acceptable and not acceptable.
 
#55 ·
In an emergency you don't trade up. You just take it. Trading a dog is about building trust. It's not about getting a certain item away from a dog.

The fact that you've never dealt with resource guarding and can't even take something away from a dog (which ended up dead) just shows how seriously anyone should take your advice.
 
#58 ·
The dog wasn't mine and it was many many many years ago. I was standing in the middle of basically a highway with semis flying through, I didn't have many options or much time to do much. My goal was to get that dog off the road and not ran over along with myself. I guess I could have just let the dog get run over, yeah that would have been better. My story wasn't meant for you to bash me, it was an example of an emergency situation. I'm not offering any advice in this situation at all, I am just questioning the method. I've had puppies and adults come into my house and I have taken stuff away from all of them without issue and we have no trust issues.
 
#73 ·
Or perhaps the indoctrination your dogs received from the first day made the difference....I would suggest it had more to do with what you did from the beginning than any of your dogs not possessing the capacity to resource guard...you just did a great job when they were young...so take credit where credit is due.

SuperG
 
#60 ·
Bailiff, I see what you meant. Yes, people def reinforce bad behavior. I thought you meant that you can do damage with marker training (positive training). Not sure what made me think that, I now see you said something different


On the subject of guarding, I think some dogs wouldn't guard whether you trained them or not. As sparra said, they don't have it in them. From my experience with my dog I agree. He doesn't guard (though has many other problems) and it's not because I did anything.


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#63 · (Edited)
If I was the op I'd just go on with life as before. I'd go ahead and do trust building activities with food for now with progressively higher value and just avoid letting the dog practice the behavior especially if you don't want to punish your dog. If you do see it you need to punish it then give the item back. The reason you punish if it's the first time you see it is ideally you create a single event learning experience.

It probably won't be necessary though. You just saw it once, but work on it anyway from the trust building side of things for now.
 
#71 ·
What I don't understand about threads like these is that the OP doesn't take part in the discussion after the first post. Instead everybody chips in and starts talking in circles. At one point the thread should be closed if there is no feedback from the OP. To these OP I have a question: why post if you leave the thread?
 
#77 ·
Dogs will do what works for them, so Baillif's question about how OP reacted afterwards is right on the money. If a dog growls or lifts a lip, and then right after that is 'rewarded' by the person backing off and leaving them with the prize, then this is 'training' them to RG. The dog will do this every time, because it works. That's why it's important to break that connection the dog makes between showing off their bad behavior and then owning the prize.

Showing off bad behavior is reinforced by dog owners all the time though. Our RGing AmBull was taught that snapping was an awesome tool for her when DH was clipping her nails and after few snaps that got him to stop. Ooops, wrong thing to teach your dog, lol. So how much of her terrible RG behavior was actual real RG, or just her making the connection that snapping and generally being miserable allowed her to get her own way?
 
#78 ·
Ok then another question. Someone has a dog, it starts displaying resource guarding and then the owner decided to try the trade up option. If the dog in question growls when one takes whatever it is away. Does that person continue to give them the higher value item? If they do that then I would see that as more of a reward and it will do nothing for the dog whereas the other option would be to just take away the item and give a stearn no and walk away.
 
#79 ·
What if you can't take the item away without injury to yourself? People make it sounds so easy, "stern no! And take item away". Not so easy when it's a 95lb male GSD that has no issue escalating. Sorry. But safe is sometimes better. In the short term, yes, the dog was rewarded. I do agree on that.


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#80 ·
I've never done trade-ups with my own dogs, because I'd rather reward for a "drop it/leave it" and reinforce those commands. But I'd guess that the whole point of the trade-up is that whatever you're trading means more to the dog than the original item, so you wouldn't get a growl - you'd get a happy dog thinking "yay steak!" instead, lol.
 
#81 ·
But you would still be reinforcing the growling by giving the reward, the steak. They aren't stupid , I could see them growling every time just to get the steak:D
 
#85 ·
I am guessing this would be the ideal situation and I can see it working on a younger dog or to prevent it from happening at all. I still don't do it, I teach the commands drop it and leave it. It seems like some people think that it can be done once the growling starts and that is what I am not understanding. When a 90 pound GSD is growling I don't understand how trading up will teach the dog anything but how to get its way.
 
#89 ·
I would do that in that particular situation for safety reasons. You are right they would probably not fall for that twice. But you now know what your looking at with this dog and mentally go over the options you have. All I know is that my GSD's are very tuned into me and they know when I am not a happy camper and they try really hard to make me not mad. If I gave mine an attitude and the look if they growled at me that would be enough for them to make the right choice. Like Jean said you have to be smarter then the dog.
 
#90 ·
Tried the "trade up " gig with my shepherd....thanks a ton everyone...I'm on the hook for big $$$ now....she decided to trade up on "our" old Chevy truck for a 2014 C63 AMG Mercedes Gelandewagen....that's gonna cost me big time.

So, what's the next "trade up" a Gulfstream G650 jet?

Man...you have to be loaded to use these new training techniques.

SuperG
 
#91 ·
Yes - I fostered him for 10 months - the EPI was a blessing, because he was a gorgeous dog and many people wanted to look past the fact that he had behavioral needs (and some slowness intellectually), but the expense of the enzymes was a different story and weeded everyone out that was not a match. A family that lives in an isolated setting, but were still able to do continued socialization adopted him. They've had some work to do - not on resource guarding but the dog has a very hard time adjusting to change/new things. He has no experience in that! But he's done well and goes on vacations and camping and is really well loved. We did a few different meetings before adoption - they went to his grooming appointment, they hung out with him to watch how I handled him at a meet and greet, and we went to their house so he would be familiar with it. It was very hard to help lift him into their car because he didn't want to go. But he is happy and doing great - he goes to the picnic every year and looks amazing and does well with a couple of hundred people and dogs. Thanks for asking!
 
#93 ·
That is such a nice story and happy ending. I would have been a foster failure after that long. I surely would have cried like a baby when I put him in the truck and he didn't want to go:(
 
#98 ·
So far...the best advice I have read was Baliff's ( I believe ).

Correcting the dog for growling and snapping the moment it happened but being savvy enough to not take the food item away at the end or not giving it back...so hopefully the dog connects the dots....growling/snapping at owner = not good. Rather than disciplining the dog and taking the item away without returning it....I can see the potential for confusion in that scenario.

Hopefully, I have that correct.


SuperG
 
#99 ·
llombardo you are not grasping the concept that you have to lay a foundation before you put on the walls or roof

watch this vid which shows loosely how the trade up works

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nuqCxleShQ

training is not a one time shot or a day of doing this or that and the problem is gone or non existent
training is an ongoing thing which is why free feeding a dog is not recommended because mealtime and food are excellent relationship builders and give you training opportunities

this is the foundation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdB1Rb1kGxE

if you missed laying the foundation or did it wrong or adopted an older pup or dog resource guarder then this is better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjpP5EZC7HI
 
#104 ·
I understand the concept. I understand how it could work for a puppy. I am open to the idea for future pups I might have. I do not see how this would work for an older dog that has been in the home since it was a pup and the foundation has been laid in a completely different manner. If this foundation wasn't laid to begin with, the dog is already set in its ways, so it becomes more complicated.
 
#108 ·
I really appreciate this. Thank you for understanding what I was trying to explain:) and just so you know I'm a she..lol.
 
#101 ·
The trouble with saying "correct the dog" is that most people will be upset and attempt to take the item from the dog's mouth. I don't have to say how badly that might end, lol! I did correct DH's dog for lunging like a crocodile when she was being possessive with a bone, but this correction was an instant "Go to your bed!" and there she stayed. The bone was left on the floor where she left it, and she did learn that if she wanted to eat her bone in peace then she'd have to do it peacefully.
 
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