Dear Val,
My Golden Retriever Puppy has started to growl at me when I pet her when she is eating!
What should I do?
Dear Growly Golden Mom,
This maybe something called Resource Guarding. Resource guarding is in which a dog guards their valuable resources. This means your dog would probably survive pretty well if in a pack of dogs and needing to eat and stay alive. Growling is a communication skill to tell other animals this is their item. Resource guarding can occur with food, tangibles or toys, space, beds, and even their people.
50% of dogs will demonstrate resource guarding. This is not so much a problem for them, except for the fact that we don’t want our social companions to growl at us. Their best friend and provider.
What can we do to help our dogs understand that we don’t want their resources and they don’t need to feel threatened. Especially their dog food and bones, haha.
The best and most successful method that I have had with resource guarding is called the give and take game.
You give your dog their bowl of food or a medium value chewy and offer them to trade with some thing you have of higher value. Such as a piece of meat. Then you give their goodie or food bowl back.
These are exercises. Exercises are something you do routinely and consistently until you have the desired results.
To recap:
Give your dog a small bowl of kibble,
Put a piece of meat in front of your dog nose and lure away from the kibble,
Give your dog the meat,
Safely pick the dog food bowl up,
And then give the food bowl back to your dog.
These exercises are to decrease your dogs drive to guard as well as establish trust in you as a provider.
Please see my Facebook page demo on this exercise Val Stallings CPDT Behavior Coach dated March 22, 2019 for a live video demo of how this exercise works.
If you have a question about training or behavior, please email me at HappyLabLady77@Yahoo.com
Make it a Pawsitive Day!
Val S Elliott CPDT Behavior Coach
Wags of Wisdom:
All you need is Love, a Dog, and a Beer.
The Daily Dog:
The Daily Dog is Blake. He is a handsome tri color Aussie Doodle that enjoys dog parks, daycares, and going to work with mom and dad. He is a very smart boy who learns new things quick. He enjoys being around farm animals but he doesn’t care for cats though. He says “yuck, patooey on cats.” He is excited about his picture in the paper and hopes to sign some Pawtographs.
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