Dog Behavior: Preventing Resource Guarding and Possessive Aggression
here Duncan is working on a Kong toy and
is full of peanut butter and he is
trying to slurp the peanut butter out
licking it out and that’s one of his
most favorite things but I have some of
his food here just a regular dog kibble
and to help prevent resource guarding
and possessive aggression I’m going to
move my hand close to his awesome kong
toy which is a really special resource
for him but it’s gonna be full of his
food so my hand actually brings
something even better and this way he
learns that hands coming towards his
Kong are not gonna take it away they’re
gonna be wonderful and bring him extra
treats yeah see how chilled out about it
he is a lot of dogs have a lot of the
time people will just go ahead and reach
in and grab something from a dog and
that can make the dog worried that every
time a hand comes towards their toy or
their food that it’s gonna be taken away
from them and if it’s something that
they really really like obviously they
aren’t gonna like having their favorite
thing taken away so they can end up
being bit defensive and starting to they
can start growling burying their teeth
and even biting your hands so to prevent
your dog from biting you this is a
really good exercise you can do this
when they’re eating at their food bowl
or from a puzzle toy the Kong is a type
of puzzle toy but there are other puzzle
toys that you can use to feed regular
dry food so look he’s totally showed up
so at this point I can probably take his
Kong well who do you think but yeah I’ll
give you a couple more
what if I put my hand on it go boy so I
could just put my hand on it and have
that as a cue that I’m gonna give him
more food so that he gets used to me
putting my hand on his toy there’s not
much peanut butter in here now either so
that makes it really easy and droppin
some treats and this is his special mat
too so it’s good to get him used to my
hands going onto the mat as well as so
he’s not guarding the mat as a territory
boy all right
so I can probably take it away and I can
trade him okay so it’s always nice to
trade dogs for the things that you’re
taking from them and Duncan’s actually
been trained to do give it could boy so
he dropped some thank you so we’ve used
operant conditioning to train him to do
this as a trick get it good give good
boy didn’t quite get it into my hand but
that’s the gist of it get it give whoops
okay
he’s better at I’m actually putting
other toys in my hand this one’s a funny
shape Duncan get it and give good boy so
that get it and give it can be trained
as a trick which we did previously give
just another way to prevent resource
aggression get it where’s your Kong good
give good boy I have another toy here
which also has them peanut butter inside
cuz you can stuff it down the middle and
I can give that to him too
can you get your bone toy
give God boy good job
and Duncan does have a history of having
lived as a stray and when he was first
rescued he was emaciated and starving so
he is really into food and can be a
little bit too into food so doing
exercises like this helps a dog like him
but even I’ve worked with you know
puppies who were bought from a breeder
and still had issues with this type of
you know resource guarding often because
their owners just took things from them
instead of trading them
