16/04/2025
This is STILL recommended… why? It’s supposed to make sure you can remove your dogs food.
Why on earth would you want to remove his food? 🫣
If someone stuck their hand in my dinner while I was eating it or took it away mid mouthful, I’d be pretty annoyed. There’d probably be a dead body if it was a coffee 🤣
When ever anyone recommends you teach your dog something, ask why. Why does it benefit your dog, and HOW?
If the answer is that it doesn’t benefit your dog, it probably won’t benefit you either 🙏
‼️POSSESSION AGGRESSION aka RESOURCE GUARDING
✋🏻 First off, let’s get one thing straight…. This is, actually, normal behaviour for dogs. In fact, for all of us - if someone reaches towards something we value, we will likely react. Imagine having a delicious roast dinner put down in front of you and someone reaches across to take one of your roast potatoes - what are you going to do? Yes - stab them with your fork. Or someone reaches out to take your mobile phone or wallet? Even someone we don’t know approaching our house, or someone walking close to our car will cause us to start guarding. Your reactions may range from momentarily freezing and staring at the person, to moving and covering your valued resource or maybe even saying “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
🤨 The problem is that resource guarding is a behaviour that our dogs really shouldn’t need but us stoopid humans can easily behave in ways that will make the dog feel they still have to protect treasured items. For example, many guardians are told to remove their dog’s food bowl to ‘show them who’s boss’. They are told that this will PREVENT resource guarding which is utter 💩 - it is the one thing almost guaranteed to create guarding - if someone kept removing my dinner while I was enjoying it or, worse, sticking their hand in it, I’d do more than snap, I tell you! 😂
If we have a multi-dog household, we may not provide each dog with their own safe spaces to eat/rest, enough toys/beds/chew items to minimise spats breaking out etc.
➡️ Possession Aggression is directed at people or animals when they get too near the dog when he has something he covets e.g., a bed, food, toy, guardian, a space, ANYTHING he deems of value. Resource guarding can be created inadvertently by:
🔴 Leaving ‘illegal’ items within easy reach and then either forcibly removing the item (by grabbing or wrestling with the dog), or chasing the dog when he has it.
🔴 Guardians getting cross when dogs ‘steal’ items (teaching pup to both avoid you when they have something AND that they need to guard it to stop you taking it)
🔴 Taking items away from the dog – this can be done unintentionally by a child or intentionally by an adult to ‘show the dog they’re in charge’ - this places more value on the item, in the dog’s eyes.
🔴 Guardians miss the early subtle signs (so the dog escalates their behaviour, seemingly becoming aggressive, in the guardian’s eyes). And we can often miss the signs because we have no intention of taking the thing from the dog, we are just going about our business, ignoring the dog, but the signs are there and we miss them.
🔴 Guardians punishing the dog for growling (leaving the dog no option but to escalate to a bite because as far as the dog is concerned, ‘If I growl I get punished so I won’t do that again’)
🔴 Never teaching reliable ‘Drop’ or ‘Leave’ cues.
🔴 Never offering a fair swap for removing items (like high value treats)
🔴 Forcibly moving them from places like a bed or sofa (instead of asking them).
The dog learns precious stuff gets taken away, leading him to get anxious/fearful/angry in those situations. Very often, the early signs of worry are missed…
- The first sign is a ‘freezing up’ – the dog stops doing whatever he was doing. If he was eating, he stops; if he was playing, he stops. They stare (not at the threat). It’s like a pause to assess the situation. They may place a paw over an object.
- In a food guarding scenario, the next sign is accelerated eating/chewing (‘Quick! Finish it so they can’t take it!’) or, if they can move the item, they move it further away to a distance they feel safer.
- Then we see fearful body postures (ears back, whale eye, crouched, tail under, fleeing, hiding). These are either missed, misinterpreted, or ignored. The guardian persists with the chase or forced removal, ignoring the dog’s emotions.
🙈 Now we have a dog who isn’t being listened to, so he escalates his behaviour in a bid to be heard and we see any/all of the following…
· Growling.
· Snarling – retracting the lips and exposing the teeth.
· Snapping – an air-bite not intended to make contact.
· Bite – which may or may not be inhibited.
⚠️ As we learned back in January, though, pain cannot be ruled out in resource guarding cases. I frequently get cases where the dog is “guarding their spot” on the sofa or bed and pain is at the bottom of it - they don’t want to move because they are either in pain, or worried that moving might cause them pain, or they know the guardian will manhandle them and cause pain. Gut issues have also been linked to resource guarding.
👀 Next up… Competitive / Ritualised Aggression
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(Radosta, 2023; Donaldson, 2002; Mills, 2017; Zulch, 2017)
Qualified IMDTB Behaviourist; offering Training & Behaviour, Group Walks, Small Pet & Equine Visits Well hi there!
