Any former Resource Guarders out there?...Advice, Support, Encouragement please!

[Julie Mison]

Our 5 month Chewie continues to show his strong willed personality. He has just completed a 5 day drop off training program where he has learned loose leash walk, heel with auto sit, down and stay. Well..he is "trained" for the trainers and doing fairly well with us and we know his success is dependent on our consistency.

He has had a hx of some growling/snapping...usually with high value bully sticks or ears ..on and off. This last week, he has gotten really bad. He used to let us take most items from him when he'd pick up things outside or inside. Not this week. He is growling and doing the snappy mouth thing!

I am so confused about the different approaches. Some say use treats and trade and some say be the leader/alpha and don't "bribe" him ....because we should "own" or control all things.

We put in a message to the trainer we were working with and she emailed back saying we should videotape his behavior so she can better understand it and that we may need to see the vet as it sounds like a behavioral problem. Not sure what seeing the vet will do?

Anyway...looking for any perspective, insight and success stories! Is it possible that his behavior has gotten worse in this area as he has just recently "lost control" in other areas?

Thanks in advance!

[Adina P]

My honest, non-expert, just opinion is: 5 days does NOT a trained dog make. I don't care WHO trained the dog...he's not 'trained' in 5 days. He can learn a lot in 5 days, but I doubt that trainer could take puppy anywhere and get those great responses with a single command, regardless of distractions or environment. So when a dog is not trained, it's easy to say "all you have to do is be consistent" because really the training is not done and you'll have to continue it as if he just started. In essence, he had a boot camp intro to things...but you'll need to take those commands into the real world and work them yourself until he's AWESOME at them anywhere you take him, regardless of other dogs or people or excitement or scary things.

I don't think there is anything wrong with bribery maybe initially...but I do not want a relationship of bribery with my dogs. Just like I don't want to have to promise my child $5 to go to bed every night or take a bath.

In the meantime, work hard in training (meaning get all his responses to a high level of reliability around various real life distractions in as many places as dogs are allowed to go) so he will obey regardless of visible, imminent reward.

So if you have to bribe him today to safely remove a toy from him...fine..but in the meantime continue basic training and work hard on the "leave it" and "drop it" command so it becomes automatic. AND remove all high value toys. They should not be laying around as if they belong to him. ALL toys are your toys...all food is your food. Anything in his vicinity belongs to you. You can use the toys as rewards after his response to "drop it" is exemplary or during training when he's gotten better and better and its time to try the command with a higher value toy.

As to the advice to see the vet...the trainer is just being extra cautious in case there was something medically wrong...it's possible, but probably not the cause. But next time you have to see the vet, may as well ask if it's still a problem.

My dogs (well Rosco) have only resource guarded from each other. So what I did was use his obedience and put him in a sit stay (by then he was strong enough in obedience--at least 1 yr old--so that I could do this) during feeding time so if he broke to be a jerk to Thule the correction was for a broken sit stay (which he understood). It also gave him some task to focus on and helped him realize that as long as he held his sit stay his food would be fine and all was well.

[Adrianne Matzkin]

A,
You won'tbeing paying your kids $5 to go to bed, etc but you will fid yourself using a chart for points for whtever you need it to cover. X number of points you EARN ______.
A

[Adina P]

Well yes, but there's a difference, in my opinion between a set earning system and bribery. If little Timmy refuses to do X...for me to repeatedly give in by offering a bribe every time (or an empty threat) is setting myself up for Timmy controlling how things run in the house. Timmy will then refuse to do X until he hears about the bribe. I don't want that. There's reward and there's payment. And there's bribery. I don't like bribery. Little Timmy should also have some consequences to his chosen actions, shouldn't he? Sometimes there is a choice between an undesired consequence and a reward...sometimes there is a choice between an undesired consequence and just a thankful mom. Hey, I'm SURE there will be times when bribery just is the most prudent and effective thing...I just don't want that to be my MO.

[Julie Mison]

Thank you all for your insight and advice. It is really helpful. His training was like a boot camp and we know he is not "trained" especially not in a reliable way and around distractions. We do need to work on drop it and leave it and I like the ideas mentioned here.

I think we need to remove "his" bones and toys from laying around and use them for rewards or be more in control of them. That is a very good point.

We love him so much and need to get this under control. Just yesterday, I yelled at my 6 year old for a moment about something and he barked at me!!! (I don't normally yell at her but she grabbed his leash really hard).

Anyway...thanks for all the amazing insight and encouragement.

[Leslie, Dexter & Kirby]

We adopted Kirby when he was 13 months old. Initially we had quite a few issues and resource guarding was one of them. I don't know if he had toys or chew bones at his first house, but he certainly did not want to be disturbed when he had them here. He would growl at us if we even petted him while he had a toy or a bone. It took time, but we 100% stopped his behavior. He still is not good at "drop it", but he no longer growls at us for anything.

The first thing we did was neuter him - that definitely seemed to help. I know Chewie is young, but it may improve after you get him neutered.

We worked on "trading" with Kirby a lot. If he has a toy, we trade a high prize treat for it.

We also played a lot of indoor fetch. To keep the game going, Kirby had to drop the toy on our lap and lay down. We worked on "leave it" to teach him some self control (he had no self control).

In the end, I don't think Kirby respected us as being in charge for a bit. With some work, we corrected all that. Good luck!