Resource guarding can be defined as possessive behavior a dog exhibits over items, food, or people. It really can be any item that that individual dog sees as valuable and guards it, either by walking away with it (mild), hovering over it, growling, or even lunging and biting to ensure that item does not get taken away.
This particular behavior can be avoided if training starts early. But what does that training look like?
First thing to point out is you don’t want your dog to develop the idea that you always take things away from him-this can actually create the resource guarding behavior. So it is best to avoid those kinds of scenarios to begin with.
Yesterday we talked about a dog guarding socks. If your dog one day decides to pick up a sock and run around with it but you are chasing them trying to rip it out of their mouth and you do this on a daily basis, eventually your dog learns that every time he gets that sock you are going to come and take it away. It doesn’t matter that the dog is not supposed to have it. It doesn’t matter that it’s your sock. All your dog knows is that you always take his treasure away-thus creating a dog who will do whatever he can to prevent you from taking it away.
So it is best that early on, you as the owner, avoid scenarios where you are consistently taking things away from your dog. Notice I said consistently. There are going to be times your dog may have something incredibly dangerous and you may have to take it away but we reserve that for those emergency situations only.
It’s also good to teach your dog other behaviors that may be incompatible with guarding such as a recall, a trade, drop it, or even a bring command where you will reward them with something of equal or higher value.
But what if your dog has already developed this resource guarding behavior?
See tomorrow’s post on some ideas of how you can work through that.
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