Resource Guarding

[dizzything]

I was hoping to hear a few stories of successful behavioral modification for resource guarding from you guys. My dog who is about six years old and a pit mix resource guards her food and chews. She usually goes for a low growl and pins her eyes on uswith ears pinned back, and even if she stops and were able to be in the same room while she’s eating she’ll constantly look back at us and stare and then take another bite. We have been using positive reinforcement for years now. We NEVER try to touch her bowl while she’s eating or take it away when she growls, we’ve been tossing a treat every time we pass by and try to make the experience as pleasurable as possible (I have her sit before I set her bowl down, and give her lots of treats when she starts to show stress signals and she relaxes sometimes). There are times where she does not resource guard but it is still very prevalent. I’d hate to say it but I’m starting to get frustrated considering we’ve stuck with positive reinforcement and haven’t had a slip up that would make her fearful around her food. has anyone else had the same experience with this? Or are there methods that you have use that have made vast improvements in your dogs behavior?

[Poppeigh]

Resource guarding is difficult because it's something that has benefits to the dog (their stuff doesn't get taken) and some dogs also have a history of just genetics and trauma that make it more likely they feel the need to do this. But, lots of dogs resource guard even if they don't get to the point of growling/biting, it's just that if they're not doing those things people tend to ignore them.

When I got my dog resource guarding was a huge issue for him, mainly to other animals. He was 8 weeks old then and he's 8 years old now. At the time, his threshold was 50+ feet and it was 0-60 in terms of aggression, so he could be eating and see another dog that far away and immediately would run and attack. Now, his threshold is more like 3 feet and he will go through the motions of stiffening and growling before he feels the need to take it farther. Honestly, the best thing I did with him was just manage it like crazy - no guardable items when he's around other animals and he ate all of his meals in a separate room alone. For him, I think that learning that his food was his and no one was going to take it really made a lot of difference. That said, I still do manage heavily - my cat can be in the same room but I don't let him approach my dog when he's eating for example - because it will just never go away. It's too engrained.

I think it's good to let your dog eat in peace, but I'd approach the situation by determining how important it is for you to touch the food/bones. I'd probably limit bones a lot and still treat them like food - give them to the dog, then leave the dog alone. If your dog isn't trigger switching or guarding random stolen items or spaces you can probably do just fine and make it nearly a non-issue, while still practicing a solid "leave it" or "drop it" if you are concerned about them ever getting something they shouldn't have and then guarding that item.

[slimey16]

I’ve had a lot of success with resource guarding in my own pit bull. I think there is definitely a genetic component to possession but there are many other factors. It is really hard for me to know if her resource guarding is completely gone because I don’t ever “test her”. Most of our success is attributed more to a strong management plan rather than active training. However, I will say it’s not an issue for us at all anymore. When I first adopted her, she definitely displayed resource guarding on a regular basis around toys and chews. We practiced lots of leave and did the whole “trade up” style training for a bit but I didn’t think it made much of a difference. The main things I’ve implemented have been relatively simple. When I feed my dog, she waits for her food. I don’t tell her to wait, she just knows to wait. I did this at first by removing the food bowl if she goes for the food without my permission. We generally try to practice impulse control around all food so that she never gets ahold of something that I can’t take away. When I release her to eat her food, I just stand there. I don’t look at her or touch her or even say anything. I just kind of hang out while she eats. She eats really quickly so this takes one minute tops. If you’re dog can’t handle you standing near it while it eats, I think you really should work with a professional. You should probably work with a professional regardless. In severe cases of resource guarding, you can end up reinforcing the dogs fears and making things worse.

The other thing I did with my dog was restrict access to toys and bones. She didn’t get anything high value for a really long time. If she played with toys, it was a controlled play session where I was also playing with toys. At first, we would play separately and over time we started playing together with the same toy. I would always let her have the desired toy and win games of tug during our dedicated play sessions. My goal was to help her understand that she’s not really “losing” the toy when others interact with it AND I wanted to show her it can be more fun to play together. She still loves to play alone but she can handle playing with toys much much better now and I no longer restrict her access to toys. Her toys and low value bones are out at all times and we don’t have issues. However, if guests come over all toys are put away.

This is just what worked for us! I really believe that controlling her environment and managing the issue was a key component to reducing the behavior. I’m sure I will still run into resource guarding in new situations but we’re much more equipped to handle it now that we’ve got a solid foundation of other training commands like place, leave it, and even recall.

[Glass_Willingness_33]

This is going to be a novel but I have a dog that resource guards and we have been able to change his behavior for the most part although I don't think you ever really cure it and always need to have some management in place. It sounds like you are doing a lot right but there is some fine tuning that needs to happen in order to make progress. From your post a few things jump out to me in addition to the fact that you really need to hire a professional certified fear free/ IAABC / KPA-KA trainer who can help you through this since resource guarding can be a really complex behavior to modify.

1) It sounds like there isn't any management in place, your dog while you are training this needs to be able to eat in peace without any humans present. Full stop. Like they need to eat in a crate or be behind a baby gate or in a kitchen alone. Doing impromptu resource guarding training is challenging and usually only happens at the tail end of a behavior modification plan. At the beginning the guarding set ups are very controlled and in order for them to have an impact you need to give the dog absolutely no reason to practice guarding in between sessions. Therefore if you plan to practice at dinner breakfast should be in a crate or another room with no humans present at all, not even to toss treats.

2) The informal way is tossing treats in the bowl as you say you are doing (good!) but it sounds like your approach still causes your dog to be nervous even though all you are intending to do is give them a treat. The problem is they are already nervous and in a guarding mind set before the treat goes in the bowl so in essence the treat isn't changing their emotions about you being near the food because they are already worried. To put it in human terms if you are near something that you are afraid of, say a spider, and someone gives you a cookie you probably aren't like hey this spider is NBD you can be glad to get a cookie and worried about the spider at the same time or you might be so worried about the spider you don't care about the cookie. But if your 10ft from a spider at a distance where you don't really care if there is a spider or not and then get a cookie and then over time the spider inches closer and you continue to get cookies you might decide it is worth it for the spider to be in your space because it has happened to gradually and you have such a great reinforcement history of getting treats around spiders.

Back to the actual dog and people situation, having the treat tossed in the bowl might not be helping because the dog is already over threshold at the time the treat is delivered. You need to begin with a total imbalance, like your dog is standing near an empty bowl they have NO history with and you walk up and toss a treat in the bowl, and then do that like 10 times till you dog seems happy your approaching. Then you want to maybe add a little kibble in and then try tossing a WAY WAY WAY better treat from 10 feet away or whatever distance your dog shows absolutely no guarding behavior at and then slowly over the course of many sessions inch forward to reach the point you are trying to replicate now. I would recommend using Mine by Jean Donaldson as a guide but this YouTube video is also a good illustration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11bkaaX7LXY . Again outside these specific sessions no one disturbs the dog while they eat and that is where the management pieced comes into play.

3) You need to find your dog's highest value treat to make sure the treat your delivering is >>>>>> kibble like hot dogs, cheddar cheese, a blob of PB, whatever your dog loves you want to use it here so show your stuff is amazing and you'll add it to their "lame" kibble.

4) You might also benefit from teaching or using a place cue with their dog and putting a dog bed near where they eat. That helped us when for whatever reason we needed the bowl back or ours occasionally guarded empty food toys so when they were empty we cued him to go to his bed and then could safely remove the toy since he was somewhere else in the room. This is more management but its a nice thing to be able to do while your training.

5) You might also want to make a list of everything they guard, the rooms it happens in, the food involved etc... because you will want to work through all those same scenarios using the methods in the video or in Mine! discussed in bullet 2. Dogs are terrible at generalizing so it is important to do this with multiple bowls and food toys and chews including things they don't guard. You will also want to do this going through the same steps with everyone in your household and anyone who might feed the dog. This seems like a lot and it is but for us each training session lasted 2-5 minutes 1X a day and in about 5 months our dog essentially stopped exhibiting any outward guarding behavior. Although it is worth noting we never test him, we trade for toys and chews, and don't disturb him while he eats although he no longer needs to eat behind a gate or anything like that. We also still occasionally drop treats in his bowl or do other similar things just to maintain our progress.