Some young puppies are prone to guarding behaviour because they have had to compete with their littermates for limited amounts of food. Teaching your puppy to eat when you are around will prevent aggressive food guarding later in life.
How to prevent food guarding:
- When it is feeding time put half the food in the bowl and the other half in your hand. As puppy is eating slowly add the food from your hand into the bowl. This creates positive association. Hands near bowl = positive thing
- Just patting the dog is a neutral association. Neutral can become negative
- Don’t feed puppy out of your hand. We want them to eat out of the bowl.
- Never take food from a dog when they have done nothing. This reinforces food guarding
- You CAN take the food IF the dog snaps or shows aggressive behaviour and only then because there is an association to be made when the behaviour and the reward (food) works the same for any resource (toy etc.)
- After you have practised these steps and your puppy is happy when you are around while he is eating you can take his bowl away and add treats to it then give him the bowl back to him to continue eating
- Rotate who does the activity so the pup becomes comfortable with everyone near food.
Please note: Children should not approach a dog while he is eating unless properly supervised. We want your puppy to learn that if anyone approaches him while he is eating it is a good thing. Allow children to be part of this training process under strict supervision and only after you are very confident that your puppy is happy with you around his food bowl.
Resource guarding
Preventing toy guarding is very important. We can teach our puppies to give up their toy so that they will give up any item we ask that may be of high value to us or dangerous for our puppy. The best way to teach the “ta” and the “swap” command is through play.
How to prevent toy guarding:
- Offer a toy to your puppy and when he takes the toy say “swap” and let him play with the toy.
- Have a similar toy ready and begin to play with this toy making it seem more exciting than the toy he has.
- When your puppy drops his toy to play with your toy say “ta” and swap toys saying “swap”.
- Continue to play with your pup swapping toys and each time your pup drops one toy say “ta” and when he picks up the other toy say “swap” (Note: do not grab the toy in your puppy’s mouth, we want him drop the toy and not play tug of war).
- While your puppy is playing with the toy remember to pat them
- If you don’t have another toy or if your puppy picks up an item you don’t want him to have offer him a treat and as soon as pup drops the item say “ta” and give him the treat and praise
Shop our range of puppy toys here.
